[ARCHIVED] Is the survey function going away?

[ashleya2]

Hi team,

I have noticed these two related bits of information on the Canvas Community:

• This page says that the "New Quizzes" function will replace the classic Quiz function in 2020: What is New Quizzes? 
• This page says that surveys are not included in New Quizzes.

Together, these seem to imply that the existing survey functionality will go away.

Right now our team has a set of surveys in Commons that we are importing into each course. If the functionality is going to be discontinued in 2020, though, we should probably stop adding surveys to new courses, and flag the existing subjects to get updated. (With Qualtrics links maybe....)

Can anyone shed light on the future of Surveys?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @ashleya2  

Your first link doesn't mention New Quizzes replacing Quizzes in 2020 (at least not when I checked just now). That date seems overly ambitious given the current state of new quizzes and the lack of feature parity between the two. I haven't seen a formal announcement of when the New Quizzes will replace the legacy quizzes, but it would be listed on the Upcoming Canvas Changes if there was a definitive date when old quizzes was being deprecated.

The second link says that you cannot do surveys but you can do assessments without points. That's not quite the same thing. Assessments indicate correct vs incorrect responses and this has been commented on many times about the old surveys and Canvas has made changes to it. I see this as a "not yet developed" rather than a "won't ever be developed" thing. On the list of features, it's not one of those things that has been marked with a footnote (like practice quizzes). What they might mean is that for the time being, until surveys are ready, you can use an assessment without points. Then again, they may have some really nifty way incorporated into assessments so that it doesn't indicate a right or wrong value (I don't see it and multiple choice questions still force you to specify a correct response).

Canvas has been pushing the notion that they release things incrementally. They argue that if they wait until something is completely done and ready, you may never see it. This may be partially due to the deliver on the new quizzes after promising it for years under different names. You still have access to the old quizzes for the time being and I'm still developing content for there, hoping that the quizzes will have a clean migration path to new quizzes when that becomes the only option.

[ashleya2]

Thanks  @James ‌ for your speedy reply!

You mention: "Your first link doesn't mention New Quizzes replacing Quizzes in 2020 (at least not when I checked just now)."

You're right. I'm not sure where I got 2020 from, unless it was an older version of this page.

I think I was combining this sentence: "New Quizzes is an assessment engine that integrates with Canvas as an LTI tool and replaces the classic quizzes functionality currently existing in Canvas."

With this:

• "[Question]: Can I create a survey in New Quizzes?
• [Answer]: No. However you can create an assessment without a point value."

And I might have mistaken a mention that the new tool would be available in 2020 with the notion that the old tool would be depreciated in 2020.

Like you, I don't think of "an assessment without a point value" as being a survey. Though the tech tools might be quite similar, it's pretty hard to send students the signal that their responses are anonymous, ungraded, and only collected so that we can serve them better ... if the UI implies that the survey is an assessment. Even now, we have a note in our surveys to reassure students that we are collecting anonymous survey data, and they should ignore the "submit quiz" button. It makes me think of something my colleague says: "A UI is like a joke. If you have to explain it, it isn't any good."

Here's hoping they do develop a survey functionality in New Quizzes before they depreciate the old tool.

Thanks again!

[nsweeten]

*Let's also hope that any new Survey function will feed compiled results into an Excel/csv file.

(The Gradebook can export to an Excel file. Why not surveys?  The whole purpose is to compile results for qualitative/quantitative data, right? Looking at survey results in disaggregated isolation only is odd.)

[jeffrey1]

Hi Ashley, 

We've seen requests for the Qualtrics LTI we developed growing since Instructure has announced this. Many universities and schools are looking for alternatives it seems.

Feel free to check it out as a solution for surveys as assignments (and other purposes) or reach out if you have questions.

https://www.eduappcenter.com/apps/1090#.X7z3cBNKg3Q

We're an Instructure partner from The Netherlands. 

Cheers.