[ARCHIVED] Quizzes with multiple attempts where questions are randomly selected from question bank

[brennem1]

Suppose you create a quiz where the students have multiple attempts and the questions are randomly chosen from a question bank. On the second attempt, does canvas draw a NEW random sample from the question bank or does the student see the same quiz they took on the first attempt?  

[James · Accepted solution]

 @brennem1  

Canvas pulls the questions at random for each attempt. It does not use the list of previous questions when determining which questions to give for the current attempt. It does not consider questions given to student A when determining what questions to give to student B. Each attempt pulls a random list of available questions independently of all other attempts. It also means that it does not avoid questions that have been used before and you may see some duplication, even with a large question bank.

Technically speaking, in legacy / old quizzes there are question groups. The content for the question groups can come from question banks and either be linked to a question bank or included as part of the actual quiz by finding the questions from the question bank. Questions in a question group can also be added directly within the quiz without the use of a question bank at all.  In other words, it's "question groups" not "question banks" that you need to look at. What I answered in the first paragraph is about question groups within a quiz.

You can pull questions from a question bank and include them as part of the quiz outside of a question group. When this happens. then they will be given in the same order and with the exact same questions each time for every student and every attempt. If you don't put them into a question group, there is no randomization.

[brennem1]

Hi James,

Thank you for the information about question groups. It solves my problem perfectly!

[Paul_R]

Students getting a different set of questions for each attempt caused a lot of confusion when I tried to use this feature.

Is there a way to make it so an individual student gets the same set of random questions for each attempt?

Sakai has this feature.  It's a simple button you select, says "randomize once for all submissions".

[Ron_Bowman]

@Paul_R -

Unfortunately, as far as I know this feature does not exist in Canvas Quizzes.  Of course I mainly use classic quizzes, so there may be something in New Quizzes, but I doubt it.

Ron

[Paul_R]

Any chance the dev team will ever add this feature?