Previously it was recommended that Semester 1 2020 assessments set the 'available from' and 'available until' times for a New Quiz in Canvas to present a 5-10 minute “window” within which students could launch and begin a quiz.

Students who had begun the quiz within this window would still be able to submit according to the Time Limit set for the quiz.

A recent update by Canvas is allowing the “Available Until” value to overwrite the Timer in a New Quiz, thus concluding a Quiz potentially before time.


To remedy this issue, simply ensure that the Available Until attribute in your new Quiz is blank (unless you want the quiz to be completely inaccessible after a specific date and time).

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If you have created a timed-quiz in Canvas according to these previous recommendations:

  • Please simply remove the Available Until attribute.  All other settings (Available from, Time Limit and any additional time allocated for specific students under Moderate , etc) can remain the same.
  • If you are currently in the process of  creating a new timed-quiz in Canvas, leave the Available until attribute blank . Set the Time Limit for the quiz as appropriate and use the "Moderate" section to allow additional time for specific students.

You can edit the settings for a new quiz by clicking on the right-hand menu for a quiz and selecting Edit

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Creating a window of time


If you wish to ensure that students only have a specific window of time in which to launch the quiz, you can simply unpublish the quiz after a specific amount of time has passed (e.g. 5 - 10 minutes after the quiz was due to begin).

E.g. for a quiz which is due to begin at 10:00, have it published for students to start and unpublish the quiz at 10:05 - 10:10

It is important, however, to inform your students about this ahead of time (e.g. that they are all to begin the quiz at the determined starting time and beyond 5-10 minutes after this starting time, they will not be able to launch the quiz).