Assignment Timer?

Hello,

For Moodle 2.5 or newer.

At this uni we have a lot of off-campus students taught via Moodle. Some lecturers use the Essay question in timed Quizzes to simulate an exam situation where students see a question and have a limited time to write a response.

So a Quiz with a single Essay question may be open for a week, 1 attempt allowed with a 1 hour timer.

Students are instructed to pick an uninterrupted hour in that week, when they start they have 1 hour to read the instructions and complete the work.

Now there is a desire to put the text through a plagiarism checker.

Rather than adding the plagiarism checker to the quizzes I thought it would be easier to add a timer to the Assignment which has better tools for feedback etc.

Has anyone looked at adding a timer (same as in the Quiz) to the Online text (or other) assignments?

Or know of a plugin that does this?

Thanks

Mal.