Learning from Experience
Over the years, Courseware Support has helped instructors accommodate their students when the standard final-exam schedule conflicts with external circumstances or conditions in a student’s life. If you’re using Canvas for final exams, then there are a few things you should know about in case you need to accommodate a student. What follows are some of the more common scenarios for which instructors have requested our help in past final-exam periods. Through these examples, we thought it’d be useful for our readers to see how they can quickly and easily accommodate their students.
A Student Needs Extra Time for an SDS-Approved Accommodation (Before Taking the Exam)
The University of Pennsylvania’s Standards for Accommodating Exams for Students with Disabilities states, “SDS (Student Disabilities Services) encourages faculty to provide exams to students approved for accommodations.” While there are many accommodations for which students may receive approval from SDS (please click on the link above for a list), Canvas lends itself particularly well to the time-extension accommodation, which grants SDS-approved students “extended time (25%) (50%) or (100%) more time for in-class tests and quizzes” (borrowed from the “Definitions of Specific Accommodations” in the above link).
If one of your students needs the time-extension accommodation, you can set up your exam in Canvas so that this student, and only this student, has extra time. For instructions on how to do this, please see the section called “Adjust Additional Options” in the following link:
“Once I publish my Quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts?” (Reminder: A Canvas “quiz” is any question-and-answer-based assessment [e.g., final exam] created and given in Canvas).
Students Needs Extra Time While Taking an Exam
In certain situations, students might request extra time on a timed-exam, or you might decide they need extra time while taking your timed-exam. If you accept this request or make this decision, you can add extra time to the exam while students take it by following these instructions:
Once I publish a timed quiz, how can I give my students extra time?
A Student Needs to Re-Take an Exam
If you have decided to let a student re-take an exam, you can do this by following these instructions:
Once I publish my Quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts? (Same link as SDS-approved accommodations. Covers all extra-attempt scenarios)
A Student Needs to Take an Exam Early
If you are letting a student take your final exam before the standard exam time, you can do this by following these steps:
I. Add an availability date to your exam. The availability date should be the date and start time scheduled for your exam. For an explanation of availability dates and instructions on how to use them, please see:
What is the difference between due dates and availability dates?
Important: Please make sure to set the availability date before you publish the exam and at least 15 minutes before students start taking it. If you reverse these steps, the exam will be available to all students until you set the availability date.
II. Publish the exam. Please see the section called “Publish a Quiz” in the following link for instructions:
How do I use Draft State in Quizzes?
III. Use the “Moderate This Quiz” feature to make the exam available to the student. To do this, you will use the quiz-moderating feature. In the following link, you will see the setting you have to enable, labelled “Manually unlock the quiz for the next attempt,” in the “Adjust Additional Options” of the page:
Once I publish my Quiz, how can I give my students extra attempts?
Need Assistance?
Please contact Courseware Support at canvas@pobox.upenn.edu if you have any questions.
Last Updated: 23 Jan 2023