Instructor Support for Educational Systems

How do I set up restrictions for a survey?

Updated on

In this article you can read what possible restrictions you can set up for your survey and how to set these up.

At Restrictions you can set up:

  • when a survey becomes available (status and data);
  • the maximum amount of allowed attempts;
  • if and which students have special access to the survey (for instance additional time for a student with a visual impairment)


  • Go to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
  • Click Course Admin.
  • Select Surveys below the heading Assessment.
  • Click Edit next to the survey (or create a new survey with New Survey).
  • Click Restrictions (the second tab).

1. Tick Hide from Users if you want the survey to be invisible to students.

2. You can decide from which date the survey is visible to students (Has Start Date) as well as when you want it become invisible (Has End Date).

3. Tick Calendar if you want the survey to appear in the calendar on the specified date. 

4. Set how many times students are allowed to take the survey:

  • Choose Unlimited if you want the students to be able to take the survey as many times as they like. Brightspace will save each attempt separately.
  • Choose Single attempt that is editable if you want students to only be able to fill in the survey once, but want to give them access to it until the end date. Students can then save the survey before having completed it in full and finish it at another time.
  • Choose Limited if you want the students to have a limited amount of attempts. Brightspace will save each attempt separately.

5. If desired, it is possible to customise the access of the survey for individual students. You can do this for multiple students at once or one student at a time. First select whether certain users have special access to the survey or if it is only visible to certain users. Then click Add Users to Special Access. Change the time and date. Add specific students under Users (you can search on user and on group) Click Add Special Access to return to the Edit Survey page. 

6. Click Save and Close to return to the Survey homepage.

You can also change the survey to active after creating the survey on the Survey homepage. To do so, select the survey(s), click Bulk Edit and change the status of Hide from Users.

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