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Giving Test Candidates Extra Time in Moodle
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    • Giving Test Candidates Extra Time in Moodle

    Owned by John Maydew, created
    Last updated: Jan 10, 2025
    3 min read

    Due to late starts, technical issues, or other reasons it may be necessary to give students extra time to complete their Moodle tests.

    These instructions only apply to tests that have been created using Moodle’s test wizard.

    You can extend the time for one student at a time, or for all test candidates at the same time.

    Instructions

    1. Navigate to the course the exam is in. Select “More” → “Exams and Tests”

    2. In the “Students” column for the exam(s), click the “View students” icon

    image-20250103-145033.png
    The view students icon is circled in purple.

    1. Locate the student whose time you want to extend, and click the “Override” link

    2. Enter the new start or finish time, or duration

    3. Click “Save changes”

    1. Scroll to the bottom of the students report, and look for the heading “Bulk candidate overrides”

    2. Enter a new finish time for all students, or a duration to extend all times by

    3. Click “Save changes”

    You should choose either a new finish time or duration, but not both.

    Extending the finish time by x minutes doesn’t add any extra time to students' timers, but may prevent students from being closed out of their attempt early because the quiz close date was reached before their timer expired. Use this option if the test has started x minutes late, and you want to ensure all students have the full time to complete their assessment.

    Updating the duration by x minutes will also increase all student's finish times by x minutes, to ensure they don’t get closed out of the assessment early. Use this option if there’s been a disruption during the test, and you want to “refund” lost time.

    Once saved students will see their updated times when they refresh the page, or navigate to a different question.

    Example Scenarios

    A student’s PC crashed, and it took 10 minutes to recover

    1. Navigate to the Exams and Tests page for the course

    2. View the list of students for the affected exam(s)

    3. Search for the affected student using the filter

    4. Click “Override”

    5. Toggle the checkbox to enable Duration override

    6. Set the value of the Duration override to the student’s existing duration + 10 minutes

      1. This input isn’t additive, so you’ll need to do some mental maths

      2. The student’s existing duration is shown at the top of the page

    7. Click “Save changes”

    The exam room was locked unexpectedly, and all students started their test 30 minutes late

    Candidates have either their full duration/timer to complete their attempt, or until the quiz / assignment close time. Whichever occurs first. Students starting late won’t have all the time they may be entitled to to complete the test.

    1. Navigate to the Exams and Tests page for the course

    2. View the list of students for the affected exam(s)

    3. Scroll to the bottom of the page

    4. Under “Bulk candidate overrides”, check to enable “Finish time” override, and set the time to 35 minutes

      1. If the test starts x minutes late, setting the finish time to x+5 gives you some extra buffer time

    5. Click “Save changes”

    In this example students may start their test as soon as they’re able, even before the overrides have been set.