5 All About New Quizzes

Among many updates over the past year, Canvas presented us with New Quizzes. For those of us who use quizzes to assess learning, the question has been whether to switch from Classic to New Quizzes. Instructional Designers have held several workshops over the past year to share the pros and cons. Below is a recap, with some new pieces!

If you need one-on-one help with Quizzes or want to consult on learning assessment, please reach out to an instructional designer. Self-help resources are listed at the bottom.

Highlights

• Faculty can choose between Classic and New Quizzes. There is no date for retiring the classic version.
• While some instructors appreciate the new question types and navigation, others don’t find the interface intuitive or have run into bugs.
• The “Build” button is the main way to create and edit Quizzes. The “Return” button helps you navigate between Quizzes and saves your edits.
• Surveys in Canvas are available again!
• You can see ongoing improvements to New Quizzes here

What’s good about New Quizzes

• You can give students course-wide accommodations (not just quiz by quiz)
• New question types are available: Stimulus and Ordering work well and can be helpful pedagogically. New Quizzes use the Rich Content Editor to format and add content to stimulus questions.
• A stimulus question requires the test-taker to analyze or respond to a piece of information – an image, graph, map, paragraph, etc.
• New Quizzes are listed as assignments on the Assignments page and can be duplicated.
• You can also duplicate a singular question in a quiz (can save time!).

What’s tricky about New Quizzes

• Mistakes in building a quiz can be irreversible. For example, if the point values on Quiz questions don’t add up to the total point value on the initial Build page, it can be difficult to repair the Quiz. If this happens early in your process, you may find it easier to create a new Quiz than to try to fix the point values.
• The “Hotspot” and “Categorization” question types don’t meet accessibility requirements.
• Importing New Quizzes from one course to another as part of a full course export can result in a blank Quiz or failed import. Canvas recommends importing New Quizzes one at a time.

Advice from Instructional Designers

• You can familiarize yourself slowly with New Quizzes in a controlled environment (practice shell or sandbox).
• It can be easier to stick with one version (New or Classic) for the whole quarter. Consistency reduces confusion among students.
• If you determine the total points before starting to build a quiz, you can save yourself a lot of adjustments and labor.
• Before publishing a quiz, it is worth double-checking point values and settings to avoid bigger problems down the road. Testing the quiz in Student View is especially helpful!
• For now, it’s better to convert one quiz at a time instead of bulk migration.

Quizzes as learning assessment

Using quizzes is a pedagogical choice and entirely up to you as an instructor. A few points to consider:

• You can make quizzes creative and engaging, e.g. give students the option to submit audio recordings, Excel files, images, etc. for a Quiz
• Depending on the types of questions on your Quiz, Canvas can grade the entire quiz for you and update your gradebook automatically. However, students learn best from individualized feedback.
• Quizzes are typically not ‘authentic assessments.’ That means they don’t replicate real-world conditions. They can, however, help with basic recall of information.
• Ungraded or low-stakes practice tests can be great study tools for students and/or help you spot patterns in a course

There are many other pedagogical considerations, from efficiency to technology hiccups. If you plan to quiz (or survey) your students, Canvas provides you with a useful tool for building, administering, and grading quizzes online.

Resources

• Types of quizzes in Canvas
• You can self-enroll in this New Quizzes support shell. You’ll find slides and a list of helpful links.
• Overview of New Quizzes for Students – video
• Overview of New Quizzes for instructors – video
• Canvas guides for New Quizzes
• Migrate an old Classic Quiz to New Quizzes
• Create an item bank (question bank) in New Quizzes
• Add accommodations in New Quizzes
• Frequently asked questions: New Quizzes