Improved exam countdown timer

Posted on 2024-07-23 by Matt West

Tim Yang has fixed the timer countdown for students who start exams late. Previously, even if a student started an exam so late that they would run into the endDate, PrairieLearn would still show the full timeLimitMin countdown timer for them, but would then cut them off at endDate. With Tim's fix, the countdown timer correctly only shows the time remaining until endDate.

90-minute exam timer bar truncated at the 60-minute mark by the exam deadline. — The exam's countdown timer now correctly reflects that Student 2 has only 60 minutes for this 90-minute exam because they started the exam too late.

When using synchronous exams (all students take the exam at the same time), it is recommended that endDate is set to give the students a 5 minute buffer. For example, a 1-hour exam starting at 2pm should have timeLimitMin set to 60, a startDate of 2pm, and an endDate of 3:05pm to let students start a minute or two late and still get the full time. See the remote exams and time limits documentation for more information.