[ARCHIVED] New Quizzes Feature Questions: Adding Files, Student View, Extensions, Points, & Auto-Submitting.

[cpadavano]

Hi Canvas Commuinity,

I wanted to bring up these features I noticed were missing from the New Quizzes. Could you let me know if I am just crazy and it is possible, or if they are features that should be considered implemented into the new program:

1. How do/Can you add a file to the instructions? 

I know this cannot be done at the question level, but the instruction level? No option to insert a file like with the Rich Content Editor features is visible.

2. Why does Student View (Test Student) on a quiz show not time limit when it is set?

I set a time limit on a quiz and went into "Student View" and my student view showed that there was no time limit set to the quiz when I clearly put in one (15 minutes).

3. Can teachers add time extension to quiz already started?

When I tested this, the student user who already started the quiz did not have extra time added when teacher added it in "Moderate". This feature worked in Legacy quizzes.

4. Points on the quiz (assignment) settings are different from the points and actual questions displayed in the quiz. Is there a way for this to sync or do teachers need to do it by hand?

Example: 6 questions in a quiz set at 1 point each, but on the Assignments section, it lists -/10pts since that is what I set when I first created it. Even in SpeedGrader it shows the teacher "out of 6 points". I understand it's equalizing the score, but syncing it would save some headache with going back and forth to two areas.

5. Does a quiz auto-submit when the until date passes?

I saw that it does for time limit, which students can still finish a quiz with the alloted time limit regardless of the until date as long as they do not leave it, but once they leave it they cannot get back into the quiz. If the quiz is timed for UNLIMITED and they leave the quiz without submitting, the "Moderate" page shows "In progress" with no option to submit the student's work. So how else is a quiz auto-submitted without a time limit?

[vanzandt]

Hi Cynthia!  I don't have answers, but I just want to express my appreciation for sharing your experiences and trying to get answers to these for everyone who might encounter these same situations. We are still withholding the New Quizzes at our institution and it's things like this that make us concerned about the impacts to our faculty.

[RebeccaMoulder]

Hi cpadavano‌,

These are great questions about New Quizzes. Hoping my experiences and responses below will save you some trouble! 

1. How do/Can you add a file to the instructions? 

A: It's not possible to attach a file to the quiz instructions or questions using the limited Rich Content Editor in New Quizzes. As a workaround, you can copy the URL for a specific file in the "Files" area (provided it is visible to students) and link it using the "Insert Link" icon. It's not a great fix, since students will have to open the file in a new tab, but it can work in a pinch.

2. Why does Student View (Test Student) on a quiz show not time limit when it is set?

A: The "Preview" tool for New Quizzes is a fairly recent addition and it has not been fully developed yet. When you set a time limit for a quiz, it will work for students and in Student View, but will not be visible in the quiz Preview. As a side note, quiz attempts taken as the test student cannot be reset and will appear in the quiz statistics. If you make any edits to a question after taking the quiz as the test student, you will be prompted to "Edit a copy" of the question since Canvas assumes students have already taken it.

3. Can teachers add time extension to quiz already started?

A: No. Teachers can use the "Moderate" button to add more time to a student's quiz attempt; however, if the quiz is already in progress, the extension will not be applied to the in-progress attempt, only future attempts (if allowed). If the student submits the quiz, you can manually reopen it and they will be able to resume taking it with whatever time they have remaining, but I know that doesn't provide the same functionality. This is an important feature of the old quiz tool because it allowed teachers to grant more time in the event of a technical error or other emergency.

The plus side to the Moderate tool in New Quizzes is that teachers now have the ability to set a percentage of more time for an individual student across all their quizzes/exams. So an instructor can give a student who needs 50% more time an extension for all their quizzes without having to remember to set it up for each individual quiz.

4. Points on the quiz (assignment) settings are different from the points and actual questions displayed in the quiz. Is there a way for this to sync or do teachers need to do it by hand?

A. It's an intended function of New Quizzes to allow different point values to be set for the assignment settings and quiz settings. If you are using Rubrics with New Quizzes, you might even have a third point value for the same assignment! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

While the two point values don't sync per se, the total points a student earns in the quiz will be calculated as a percentage of the points possible for the assignment. This seems to work fine (and can be preferred if you want to have a series of 5-point quizzes, but the number of questions varies for each quiz). The exception is if you want change the points possible of the assignment after students have submitted the quiz. In this case, the assignment score will not automatically update as a percentage of the points possible. Hopefully this feature idea I created does a better job of explaining this situation: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/13877-quizzesnext-automatically-adjust-students-scores-as-perc... 

5. Does a quiz auto-submit when the until date passes?

A: No, currently New Quizzes will only auto-submit if a time limit is set and the time expires. If an "Until" date passes, students will be locked out of completing the quiz and it will display as "In Progress." There's a brand new feature idea concerning a related issue that you can vote up:https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15021-new-quizzes-automatic-submission-at-the-due-datetime 

The lack of auto-submit at the Until date was an issue for several quizzes I was supporting last Spring, and each time the workaround was to temporarily reopen the quiz for those students who had "In Progress" submissions, masquerade as the students, and submit what they had entered as of the due date on their behalf. New Quizzes captures more detailed View Logs than legacy quizzes, so I was able to see a history of how students responded to each question.

One warning I'll share about New Quizzes is that if students keep the quiz open on their devices without making changes for long stretches of time (eg, a couple days or up to a week), their Canvas login may time out, causing their responses not to save in the View Logs when they eventually input answers and try to submit. The issue is prevented by encouraging students to close out of the quiz any time they are not actively working on it.

[rob_peregoodoff]

Thank you for the detailed reply Rebecca on a number of important topics.  If I may, I need to ask for clarification on the 'side note' you put into item #2 because if I am interpreting this correctly, this will be the proverbial straw that broke our Canvas assessment back.

So if an instructor has created a quiz (or a full 2.5 hour exam for 1000 students in our case), previews it as the test-student for U/X an accuracy purposes, finds errors, when they go to edit those errors they will not be able to edit their existing exam, but rather they will have to create a copy of the exam because the test student data cannot be deleted?  And in the case of multiple prevew/edit cycles (which we have for large exams...), each cycle will create a new version of the exam?

Appreciate your time.

[rswengel]

If what you describe is accurate, that will eliminate our entire teaching staff from EVER using the new Quiz engine.  A claim cannot be legitimately made that all of this is because it's an LTI element.  Others I have used did not have such an issue.

[rmurchshafer]

I don't think you have to make a copy of the entire exam; I think it creates a copy of the just the question you are editing and I presume this is because it needs to keep the original to be associated with the attempt that was made.  I haven't test this yet, but if you "reset" the test student I assume the attempt would be removed and you might be able to edit a question without it making a copy.  And it's not like you have to consciously make a copy of the question; it just puts up an alert when you try to edit the question letting you know that a copy needs to be made to do it.  

Rick

[RebeccaMoulder]

Thank you,  @rmurchshafer2 ‌, that's correct about how "Edit a Copy" works; I've updated my reply to reflect that difference. Canvas doesn't create a copy of the quiz, just a new version of the question that will be visible only to students who haven't taken the quiz yet or who have additional attempts to take. 

To clarify my initial post, using the quiz "Preview" tool does not count as students having taken the quiz. This only happens if you take the quiz as the test student using "Student View." Resetting the test student does not remove the attempt from the quiz statistics or remove the "Edit a Copy" message. In my experience, this hasn't been much of an issue. Before the "Preview" tool was added in New Quizzes, I needed to try out an exam before releasing it to 900 students. I was able to take it as the test student a few times and make edits to questions before students took it, so the only version they saw was the final one. 

[cpadavano]

 @RebeccaMoulder ‌ Wow, thank you so much for your insight. I figured as much that the features I was bringing up were possible yet-to-be-implemented things.

Hopefully Canvas sees this for more features updates.

My institution has it as a beta program, we have not released it institution-wide for the main reason that New Quizzes cannot be used with online proctroing tools as the access code cannot be encrypted. However, instructors who are still using Legacy Quizzes and have faced a handful of issues that will not be fixed I can see becoming frustrated with New Quizzes should some of these previous features in it not be implemented or improved.