What are the Availability and Submissions options for an assessment?

In Availability and Submissions, you can set who should take the assessment, availability dates, and how many submissions are allowed.

For information on editing additional settings, see:

Access the assessment's settings.

Actions menu with Settings selected

For steps to access the Settings page, see How do I inspect and adjust the settings of an assessment?

Select Availability and Submissions.

When you first access the Settings page, the Availability and Submissions options are expanded by default.  If they are not displaying:

  1. Select the section title on the assessment's Settings page.
  2. Or select the Expand All button to open all the sections on the Settings page.

Who can access this assessment?

By default, Each member of the site will be able to take the assessment.

Alternatively, you may release the assessment to Anyone with the link (Anonymous survey) or Each member of the selected group(s) within your site.  Select one of these options from the drop-down menu.

Note: You cannot change the Who can access this assessment? option on any published assessment.

Each member of the selected group(s)

If groups exist in your site, you may release an assessment to selected groups.

Tip: If you have several students who need the same accommodations for availability dates or extra time, you may create a date or time limit exception for a group, rather than creating a separate assessment copy for the group.  For more information, see How do I give specific students different date or time settings on an assessment?

Open the group selection menu.

After choosing Each member of the selected group(s), a drop-down menu will appear with No groups selected. Open this menu.

Select the desired group(s).

In the group selection menu:

  1. You may use the Search box to search for groups by title,
  2. Use the Select All Groups checkbox to select all groups listed in the site,
  3. Or select the checkbox for each group.
  4. Once groups have been selected, the menu lists their titles. In the example pictured above, the menu name has changed from No groups selected to TA Grading Group 1, TA Grading Group 2.

Anyone with the link (Anonymous survey)

You may use the Anyone with the link (Anonymous survey) option to create anonymous surveys.  An example of an anonymous survey is the Electronic Teaching Analysis Poll (eTAP), which can be used to collect mid-semester feedback from your students for your course.

Additional considerations:

  • If you make an assessment available to Anyone with the link, you must distribute its link to participants; it will not be accessible from within your site's Tests & Quizzes tool.  The link will be presented when you publish the assessment.
  • You can make anonymous surveys available to anyone. Login access to UVACollab is not required.
  • Anyone to whom you provide the link to an anonymous survey can submit it as many times as they like.

Note: No information identifying who submitted the assessment is recorded in an anonymous survey.

How many submissions are allowed?

By default, only 1 submission is allowed.  Enter the number of times students are allowed to submit the assessment, or choose Unlimited to let them submit as many times as they like.  

Tip: Unlimited submissions can be used for self-assessment, practice tests, or drills.

Note: When multiple submissions are allowed, each submission is a unique, new copy of the assessment with its own time limit (if it is timed).

Availability Dates

Availability dates let you specify when your assessment can be accessed by students.  By default, all dates except for the Available Date are blank.  

You may enter the dates into the fields provided, or use the date-picker (calendar window) to select a date and time.  If you enter a date manually, it will need to be in the following format: month/day/year hours:minutes am or pm.  For example, to make an assessment available on August 31, 2021 at 12:00 AM, you would enter 08/31/2021 12:00 am into the Available Date field.

  1. The Available Date is the start date of the assessment window.  Students will not be able to see the assessment before this date.
  2. The Due Date is the end date for the assessment window. By default, the Due Date is also the Final Submission Deadline for the assessment. See below for more information about the Final Submission Deadline.
  3. You may select the calendar icon to open the date-picker.  You can choose a date by clicking on it in the calendar, or by clicking Now.  Select a time using the Hour and Minute sliders.  When your date is selected, click Done.

Note: If you leave the Due Date blank, the assessment will have No Deadline.

What is the Final Submission Deadline?

The Final Submission Deadline is the cutoff date after which students can no longer submit the assessment.

The Due Date

By default, the Due Date is also the Final Submission Deadline.

Late Submission Deadline

  1. You may accept late submissions by selecting Accept late submissions, then entering a Late Submission Deadline in the date field that appears.
  2. If you allow late submissions, submissions that come in after the Due Date will be marked LATE in capitalized red letters after their Submit Date.

Note: If you allow multiple submissions, only one late submission is allowed after the Due Date, and it only applies to students who have not submitted at all.

Timed assessment

To make a timed assessment, select the and has a time limit of checkbox, then select a time limit in hours (hrs.) and minutes (min.) from the respective drop-down menus.

Advantages of a time limit:

  • A bar indicating how much time remains displays to students during the test. The time remaining is restricted by the Final Submission Deadline.
  • When the time is up, a student's work in progress will be automatically saved and submitted.

Important: If you are offering a test or quiz in class, setting a time limit ensures that students' work is saved and submitted when the time limit expires, or at the latest submission date, whichever comes first. For example, if your exam begins at 9:00 am and ends at 11:00 am, set a time limit equal to the amount of time between the Available and Due Dates, i.e., 2 hrs. 00 min.

Note: When a student selects Begin Assessment to start taking a timed test, the timer begins counting down and cannot be paused.  Similarly, extending or removing a time limit on an in-progress assessment will not extend the timer for students who have already begun taking the test; the assessment will be saved and submitted for them at the expiration of the original timer.

Tip: You can easily add extended time accommodations for individual students or groups. For steps, see How do I give specific students different date or time settings on an assessment?

Enable Auto-submit?

The Auto-submit feature forces the submission of saved assessments belonging to students who have started the assessment, but did not successfully submit their work before the Final Submission Deadline.

Please note that Auto-submit does not save student work before submitting. Only work the student saved before the submission deadline will be included in an automatic submission.

To enable this option, check the box to Auto-submit after Final Submission Deadline.

For more information, see How does Automatic Submission work in Tests & Quizzes?

Submission Notifications to Instructors

By default, the notification option is Do not send notification emails for any student submissions.

For instructors to receive email notifications when students submit the assessment, select Send a notification email for each student submission or Send one email per day summarizing notifications for student submissions.

Tip: You can find a description of the notifications in What information is in a Tests & Quizzes email notification?

Question Scores

By default, the option Show question point value during assessment is selected.  Select Hide question point value during assessment to prevent students from seeing the questions' point values while they take the assessment.

Tip: If you have assigned any multiple choice, multiple selection questions a point value equal to the number of correct answers, hiding the questions' point values will prevent students from guessing how many answers are correct.

Add a password to access the assessment (Optional)

You create an Assessment Password for added security on your assessment.  The password is typically provided by a proctor in a classroom or testing center, so students must be present to enter the assessment.

  1. Select Ensure students take exams from specific location to expand that section.
  2. Enter the desired password in the Assessment Password field.

Note:

  • The Assessment Password is for this specific assessment, not the instructor's or the student's login information.
  • If you have accidentally added a password in the Assessment Password field, and your students cannot access the assessment, you can remove it by going to the Published Copies tab in Tests & Quizzes, selecting Settings for the assessment, deleting the erroneous password, and selecting Save.

Add message that students will see after submission (Optional)

Screenshot of Add message section of page. Graphic link opens modal with larger image. Press Escape to exit modal.
  1. To enter a message that will display to a student once they submit the assessment, select Add message that students will see after submission (Optional).
  2. Enter the Submission Message in the field provided.
  3. You may also add a Link to a web page with a message to be displayed after submission.  Select Validate URL to confirm adding the link.