KB1091 - How to override activity settings for your students

If you have a student or group of students who need more time to complete a quiz or need an additional attempt, you can use a User or Group Override to acommodate them. Overrides allow you to create custom start and end dates or durations for Moodle quizzes or assignment activities.

Creating a User Override for a Quiz or Activity:

  1. From your course's main page, click on the applicable quiz or assignment activity link.
  2. Click on the "More"menu option above, and select "Overrides".
  3. Choose the User or Group Override option.
  4. Click the "Add User Override" button.
  5. Select a Student from the "Override user" Search list.
  6. Set the parameters that your users will need, such as a different start date, or duration, number of attempts, or password.
  7. Save your changes.
  8. Check to ensure that the activity is set to be visible to students during the date/time that it is made available in the User/Group Override, or else overrides may be ignored. This is explained in more detail below under #3 of the IMPORTANT things to note when setting up Overrides as well as the example provided, below.

Creating a Group Override:

Using Group Override is similar to User Override, except that you will select one of your course's user Groups instead of selecting an individual user.

IMPORTANT things to note when setting up Overrides

  1. Your override(s) will only apply to the user(s) you have selected, and will not be visible to the other Students in your course.
  2. Overrides apply to the availability of an activity (i.e., time restrictions set under the Timing settings of an activity, as shown below) and not it's visibility.

    Activity timing settings
     
  3. This can be a bit confusing, so be sure to read it carefully: If an activity is not visible (i.e., is "hidden") from students, then any overrides will be ignored. The visibility of an activity can be set in several ways and any one of them will affect the functionality of your overrides:
    1. Using the activity edit menu on the front page of the course
    2. Using the Availability setting, found under the Common module settings section of the activity settings page
    3. Using the Restrict access settings, found on the activity settings page.

An Example Override:

For this example, imagine that today is February 8, 2021.

In the above example image, the quiz timing is set to January 14, 2021 from 9:30 am to 10:45 am (75 minutes), and allows the students 60 minutes to complete it. This allows for a little cushion time, for students who may get off to a little slow start while still limiting their actual quiz time to 60 minutes like everyone else who started on time.

The override settings shown here allow the student, Bruce Wayne, to start the quiz at noon (12:00 PM). Although he has until 2:00 PM (Quiz close time setting), he will only have a total of 90 minutes to complete it. This allows for a little bit of a late start, while still allowing for the full 90 minutes.

Bruce Wayne Override Settings

 

Once the settings are saved, they look like this:

Override Error

Note the warning message in the pink box. This is an indication that there is some sort of access restriction set that needs to be removed. THIS CAN BE A BIT CONFUSING since the restriction doesn't actually need to CONFLICT with the override. In this example, the restriction of February 10th shown below does not conflict with Bruce Wayne's date of February 14th.  The mere fact that the restriction is set causes this error. This appears to be a BUG that needs to be fixed. In the mean time, all you can do is be aware of it. The only work-around is to remove (at least temporarily) the restriction set on the activity settings page.


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