Loyola Support Documentation

How can an instructor retrieve assessments that were saved but not submitted?

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When a student selects the Submit for Grading button on the last page of an assessment or the Table of Contents, they are taken to an Assessment Submission Warning screen to confirm their submission. If they do not select the final Submit for Grading button to confirm their submission and the assessment has no time limit, their responses may be saved, but the assessment will remain In Progress. Instructors do not have access to the content of In Progress assessments.

If a student has not yet submitted a copy of an untimed assessment, an instructor can retrieve their submission using the Automatic Submission (Autosubmit) feature in Tests & Quizzes.

However, students with an incomplete submission on a timed submission would be listed as having No Submission recorded on the Total Scores screen.

How does automatic submission work?

Behind the scenes, there is an automated process that will check the following:

  1. Did the latest acceptance date for this assessment pass yet?
  2. Did this student press the Begin Assessment button, save their work, but fail to successfully submit the assessment via the Submit for Grading button on the Assessment Submission Warning screen?
  3. Was this the first submission attempt?

If all of the above conditions are true, the system will automatically submit the student’s saved assessment. The submission will be available for instructor review around 5am on the date immediately following the late acceptance date for the assessment.

Instructors can review all student submissions normally. Any assessments that were submitted via automatic submission will be flagged on the Total Scores screen with the text AUTO-SUBMIT. All answers that were saved will be included in that automatic submission.

Select Tests & Quizzes.

select Tests & Quizzes

In the target Sakai site, select Tests & Quizzes from the Tool Menu.

Warning: It is not recommended to modify the settings of an assessment while testing is in progress, as it may cause loss of student submission data.

Wait for submissions to become available.

assessment becomes available after autosubmit

How do automatic submissions display?

auto-submit label displays on submissions

Instructors access automatic submissions from the Total Scores screen just as they would any other assessment submission. However, automatic submissions display differently from manual or timer submissions as follows:

  1. When an automatic submission occurs, the email notification sent to students and/or instructors will contain Notification for assessment auto submission. The Submitted Date in the email notification indicates when the student last saved content in the assessment. The time stamp on the email that was sent will indicate when the actual submission occurred.
  2. On the Total Scores screen, automatic submissions are flagged with the text AUTO-SUBMIT. The time stamp that appears in the Submit Date column for automatic submissions indicates when the student last saved content in the assessment, NOT when it was actually submitted by the Automatic Submission feature.
  3. In the Tests & Quizzes Event Log, the Errors column will indicate No Errors (Auto-submit). The Date Submitted column will indicate when the actual submission occurred. The Duration column will indicate how much time elapsed between when the student began taking the assessment and when it was actually submitted; it does NOT indicate how much time the student actually spent taking the assessment.

Below are examples displaying automatic submissions.

Example of Email Notification for Automatic Submission

sample email notification for an automatically submitted test

In the event of an automatic submission, the time stamp on the notification email sent to a student and/or instructor is when the actual submission occurred, while the Submitted Date in the email is the last time the student accessed the assessment.

The subject of the email for an automatic submission will say Notification for assessment auto submission: [the title of the site where the assessment was taken] - [the assessment title].

The first line of the email notification will include the text The following assessment auto submission was recorded.

For more information on Tests & Quizzes email notifications, see What information is in a Tests & Quizzes email notification?

Examples of automatic submissions on the Total Scores screen.

example of auto submission on total scores screen
  1. When an instructor accesses the Total Scores screen to grade the assessment, automatic submissions are flagged with the text AUTO-SUBMIT.
  2. The time stamp that appears in the Submit Date column for automatic submissions indicates when the student last saved content in the assessment, NOT when it was actually submitted by Automatic Submission.

For more information on accessing student submissions and grading, see How do I grade Tests & Quizzes?

Examples of automatic submissions in the Event Log.

example showing autosubmit in the event log
  1. In the Tests & Quizzes Event Log, the Errors column will indicate No Errors (Auto submit).
  2. The Date Submitted column will indicate when the actual submission occurred.

For more information on the Event Log, see What is the Tests & Quizzes Event Log?

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