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Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Christian Seberino -
Number of replies: 7
I'm guessing some students wait until the last second of the countdown timer before submitting their work.  They don't understand it takes a few seconds for their browser to SEND the data to the Webwork server.  

Hence they get a zero for their test.

Any way to add a 1 min buffer or avoid this issue some other way?

cs

In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Danny Glin -
There is a built in grace period in gateway tests.  From defaults.config:

# Option for gateway tests; $gatewayGracePeriod is the time in seconds
$gatewayGracePeriod = 120;

This means that by default the system should accept submissions up to 2 minutes after the deadline.  You can increase or decrease this value by adding the appropriate line to localOverrides.conf for the whole server, or to course.conf for a specific course.
In reply to Danny Glin

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Christian Seberino -
Thanks.  That seems like more than enough time.  They must be not submitted it at ALL because there is no way it would take 2 min to be received.

cs
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Christian Seberino -
If I do a 120 min exam...why would several students have a zero for their scores but it NOT say "time limit exceeded"???

Instead in all cases it says they took EXACTLY 120 min?

That is the mystery.

cs
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Lars Jensen -
Hi Christian,

Students probably start the exam but then walk away or never finish it, so it times out and doesn't get submitted.

Lars.
In reply to Lars Jensen

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Christian Seberino -
Lars

Thanks.  But why does sometimes it show the duration of the test for the Test Time and othertimes it shows "Time Limit Exceeded" then?

cs
In reply to Christian Seberino

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Gavin LaRose -
Hi Christian,

I think that what should happen is that a test that was not submitted in the time limit will be described as "over time: closed" on the problemsets page. I can't find an instance in our courses of the "Time Limit Exceeded" message. I would expect that would be reported when the test was submitted at a time that was after the time limit for the test, plus grace period.

If a test shows a time of exactly the time limit, it's most likely that the student submitted the test at the time limit or in the grace period (tests finished in the grace period are reported as being at the time limit). If the score on such a test is 0 I would first check to see if the student simply didn't get anything correct. If that's not the case we may want to do some further investigation.

Gavin
In reply to Gavin LaRose

Re: Students waiting until last second to submit exams....possible to add 1 min buffer or how fix latency issues?

by Christian Seberino -
Yes they got some correct.