About New Quizzes in Canvas

• Overview
• New Quizzes vs. Canvas Quizzes
  • New features in New Quizzes
  • Missing features and known issues in New Quizzes
• Get started
• Documentation
• Get help

Overview

Two quizzing tools are available in Canvas: The original Canvas Quizzes tool (Classic Quizzes) and New Quizzes, which is still under development. Instructure has postponed the retirement of Classic Quizzes indefinitely (although UITS expects it to be retired in the future) and is allowing customers to set their own transition schedule.

IU will not announce a timeline for retiring Classic Quizzes until most of the development work described in the New Quizzes Roadmap is complete and the tools for migrating quizzes and question banks are ready. For now, Classic Quizzes is the default quizzing tool in all Canvas courses, and the New Quizzes tool is a course-level feature option that instructors can enable. Once New Quizzes is more fully developed, the status of both tools may change.

Who should consider using New Quizzes

New Quizzes has helpful new features, but it is also missing some features on which many faculty depend. Review the New Quizzes vs. Canvas Quizzes section carefully to make sure that the quizzing and grading features you need are available in New Quizzes. Consider the following when choosing a quizzing tool:

• The tools for migrating Classic Quizzes and question banks to New Quizzes and items banks are still relatively new and occasionally produce unexpected results. For information and advice, see Migrate Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes in Canvas.
• If you will be building quizzes for a new course from scratch, and if you won't be hampered by the tool's current limitations, consider using New Quizzes. By building quizzes in the newer tool, you won't have to worry about migrating them later.
• Even if you don't plan to use New Quizzes regularly, UITS encourages you to explore the tool in a practice site and perhaps use it for low- or no-stakes activities in regular courses. Getting familiar with the tool now will prepare you for the transition to New Quizzes.

New Quizzes vs. Canvas Quizzes

It's important to understand the differences between Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes, particularly if you are already a regular user of Classic Quizzes. For a high-level comparison of the two tools, review Canvas | New Quizzes Feature Comparison. More information about new and missing features in New Quizzes is provided below:

New features in New Quizzes

The following features are available in New Quizzes, but not in Classic Quizzes:

• Duplication:
  • Duplicate a quiz
  • Duplicate a question in a quiz
  • Duplicate a question in an item bank
• Grading, moderation, and feedback:
  • Filter student attempts by status (show all, no attempts left, attempts in progress, submitted, autograding failed)
  • Give students accommodations (for example, extra time, remove time limit) that apply to all quizzes, not just the current quiz
  • When regrading a question, award points for any submitted answer
  • More granular control over what information students can see when grades and feedback are released (for example, points possible, points awarded, items and questions, student response, correct/incorrect indicator, correct answer with incorrect response, item feedback)
• Item/question banks features:
  • Share banks with specific users, courses, or the entire institution, and control the level of access when sharing (edit or view only)
  • Sort, filter, and search all banks owned by and/or shared with you
  • Add tags to questions in item banks
  • Add any quiz question to one or more item banks
  • View the last date a bank was used
• Import/export:
  • Import a QTI file directly into a quiz
• Outcomes:
  • Align one or more outcomes with an entire quiz
  • Align one or more outcomes with individual questions
  • View the quiz outcomes results in the Outcomes Analysis report
• Printing options:
  • Print a blank quiz for students to take with pencil and paper
  • Print an answer key
  • Print an autograded student attempt
• Question authoring:
  • For essay questions, enable or disable the rich content error, word count, enable/disable word limit, and spell check, and add notes for grading
  • For file upload questions, restrict file types and number of files
  • For fill-in-the-blank questions, choose from a variety of matching options, including contains, close enough, regular expression match, exact match, and specify correct answers
  • For formula questions, when generating possible solutions, display answers in scientific notation.
  • For matching and multiple answer questions, choose partial credit or exact match (all-or-nothing) grading
  • For multiple choice questions with shuffled answers, lock the location of specific answers (for example, all of the above, none of the above) and vary points by answer
  • For numeric questions, specify margin of error as a percent or absolute; specify precision by decimal places or significant digits
• Question types:
  • Categorization: Requires students to assign a list of items to a predefined list of categories
  • Hot spot: Requires students to point to a designated region in an uploaded image.
  • Ordering: Requires students to arrange a list of items according to your instructions (for example, chronological order, simple to complex, etc.)
  • Stimulus: Requires students to answer multiple questions related to a single block of content consisting of rich text and/or media.
  • Word bank: This FITB variant requires students to draw words from a pre-existing bank of possible answers to fill in the blanks
• Report data:
  • Cronbach's Alpha calculation
  • Average score for each question
  • Performance by quintile graph for each question (graph actually shows score distribution)
• Settings:
  • Shuffle questions globally (for the entire quiz)
  • For quizzes with multiple attempts, require a waiting period between attempts
  • Assign a different point value for the associated gradebook item than the total possible points in the quiz; points earned on quiz are converted to a percentage value which is multiplied by the points possible in the assignment/gradebook item
  • Allow or disallow calculator and choose from basic or scientific calculator when allowed
  • Build on last attempt; for quizzes with multiple attempts, students are only asked to answer questions that answered incorrectly in previous attempt
  • Require a waiting period between attempts

Missing features and known issues in New Quizzes

To track the status of missing features and known issues in New Quizzes, see the Google sheet New Quizzes: Missing Features and Known Issues. The Google sheet includes Instructure's tentative delivery date as specified in the New Quizzes Roadmap. For other feature gaps and issues, there are links to corresponding feature requests in the Canvas Community site.

Get started

Even though New Quizzes is part of the Canvas LMS, it behaves a little differently than other core Canvas tools because it's an external LTI tool. Here are some pointers to help get you oriented; see the documentation for detailed instructions.

• Enable New Quizzes in your course: New Quizzes is currently a course-level feature option. To turn it on in your course, go to Settings, select Feature Options, and then set the "New Quizzes" option to On.
• Start in Canvas Quizzes: The Canvas Quizzes tool houses both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. Once you enable New Quizzes, you'll be asked which type of quiz you want to create. On the quiz listing page, icon styles differentiate classic from new quizzes. Classic quizzes have an outlined icon of a rocket ship (), whereas the icon for new quizzes is a solid (filled in) rocket ship ().
• Quiz settings: The settings for "new" quizzes are stored in two different places. When you create a new quiz, you'll see a typical assignment settings screen where you can enter the title, points, assignment group, and availability/due date, as well as to add an optional rubric (these are the "assignment settings" for the quiz). To view the remaining quiz settings, select Build to enter the quiz edit mode, and then select Settings in the menu at the top.
  Important:

  Regardless of the number of points available in the quiz, the point value entered in the assignment details determines the value in the Gradebook. For the Gradebook score, the percentage of quiz points earned is multiplied by the points possible in the assignment details. For example, if a student earns 18 out of 20 points (90%) on a quiz worth 15 points in the assignment details, the student's score in the Gradebook would be 90% of 15, or 13.5.
• Edit a new quiz: To edit an existing new quiz, open the Quizzes tool, select the quiz title to open the assignment settings for the quiz, and select Build at the bottom. Alternatively, from the quiz listing page, open the options drop-down menu for the desired quiz and select Build.
• Start grading from the Gradebook: To grade a new quiz, go to the Canvas Gradebook. Select any student cell in the column for the quiz, open the Grade Detail Tray, and select SpeedGrader. Once you're in SpeedGrader, use the student list and the next/previous links to move from one student to the next. For more, see How do I grade an assessment in New Quizzes?
• Return to your course: When you are working in a new quiz, the navigation menu for your course will be hidden. To leave the quiz and return to your course at any time, select Return at the upper right.

Documentation and resources

• Instructor guides
• Student guides
• New Quizzes Hub: The Canvas Community hub for New Quizzes product updates, discussions, questions, roadmap, and feedback

Get help

Teaching and learning centers

UITS Support Center