U052 – How can I allow a student to restart a widget?

By default, BookWidgets will store the students' widget progress. This avoids situations where a student would have to start from scratch if they accidentally close the browser window, or in case of an internet or power blackout. Yet, there are also scenarios where you might not want that: e.g. perhaps you'd like to exceptionally let a student retry despite having configured the widget to only allow one submission per student, or if you have the exam mode enabled and the timer has expired. Repeating students shouldn't generally find their answers still filled in from the year before, either. What are your options?

Erasing activity is not the same as deleting a submission. To erase activity means: to erase the progress, i.e.: remove the answers filled in by the student, allowing them to restart the widget with a 'clean slate'. If a student has submitted a result for a widget, then erasing the activity will not delete nor otherwise influence this submission.

Automatic widget reset

For widgets shared in a connected Learning Management System (LMS), widget activity is reset automatically at regular intervals. By default, this is on September 1^st each year. You can change the settings in Settings > Widget activity. The automatic widget reset has the following benefits:

Taking student data privacy into account, data aren't stored longer than they have to be.
Repeating students that have to redo the same widgets they've done a year earlier, will start fresh rather than finding previous year's answers still filled in.

Manual widget reset

Via Live Widgets

This method logically requires the widget to support Live mode. Not all widgets do. More info on the topic: Which widgets support live mode?

Live tracking must also be enabled on your account. The option can be found here. Enabling the Live mode will not allow you to trace widget activity retroactively.

Go to Live Widgets.
In the list of widgets played, find the class/course and widget you're looking for.
Check the boxes for the student(s) whose activity you'd like to reset.
Click "More"> Reset.

Live mode will only keep track of student activity for 30 days. In case your student repeats the year, you'll need to resort to the following method.

Via Opened widgets

If the widget doesn't support Live mode or if the student's activity is older than 30 days (e.g. in case of repeating students), and if you use BookWidgets from within an LMS integration, you can find the activity in Review.

Open Review.
Select a course.
Select a class.
Either scroll to the heading Opened widgets if you'd like to reset all activity for an entire widget (i.e.: reset for all students), or click a student name first and then scroll to Opened widgets to reset widget activity for individual students.

Then, to reset activity:

Check the boxes next to the titles of the widgets for which you'd like to reset the activity.
Click "More"> Reset selected widgets.

In student view

Provided that you have not enabled the widget setting Reporting > Allow student to submit only once, students will find a trashcan icon in the top-right corner, which they can click to clear all answers and start over.

Alternatives

If widgets aren't shared in an LMS, then BookWidgets will try to store student progress locally, i.e.: in the browser. As such, the student can obtain an empty widget if:

the browser cache is cleared;
another browser is used.

Finally, if you duplicate the widget and provide students with the link of the duplicate, BookWidgets will regard it as a new and unrelated widget. In practice, it will have the same effect as a proper widget reset.