[ARCHIVED] Split quiz questions into pages?

[lbach]

I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but I'd like to find some middle ground between the quiz presenting all the questions on one page or only presenting one question at a time.

Is there a way, either in Classic or New Quizzes, to have the quiz show 5 or 10 or however many questions at a time? I used to be able to do this in iLearn, it'd be wonderful to be able to do it in Canvas. Especially since we're moving to online instruction and online exams, having all the questions in one page can be daunting for students, but some questions might be connected to the previous question, so showing one question at a time doesn't really work for me. Thanks!

[James · Accepted solution]

 @lbach  

To do this with Legacy Quizzes, you would need to create multiple short quizzes rather than one long quiz and then deliver each of them with all questions visible.

In New Quizzes, there is a stimulus question type that allows you to group questions -- however, your questions may not have the common stimulus needed to make this happen. You mention some questions are related to others -- that seems like a great opportunity for stimulus questions. 

[lbach]

Oh, the Stimulus option would be interesting. Do you know if Canvas shows all the questions nested under a stimulus question at the same time if one question at a time is selected, or does it show them individually with the same stimulus repeated?

Thanks for your response!

[Stef_retired]

 @lbach ‌

When multiple questions are attached to a single stimulus and the quiz is set to deliver questions one at a time, the stimulus persists as the questions display one at a time.

[lbach]

Thanks! I have one more question, if I set the quiz to shuffle questions, do the questions associated with the stimulus get reordered? I assume they stay together when the questions are shuffled, but if I wanted to ask one question followed by a short answer "explain your reasoning for your answer to the previous question", would those get rearranged if shuffle questions is turned on?

[James]

 @lbach  

I just did some testing.

I created three questions, one of which was a stimulus with three parts.

When I shuffled the question order, the three questions shuffled, but the three parts of the stimulus question always remained in the same order. 

I repeated the reloading five times and that was consistent.

I then created a bank of questions and told it to include all of them in the stimulus question. The order of the parts appeared the same each time I previewed the quiz and it was the order that it appeared in the bank.

Once you have added the questions from the bank, I went through and edited it to tell it to include a random number of questions. I still used all 3 questions that were in the bank but told it to randomly select the questions. When I did this, the order of the parts within the stimulus question were randomized.

[James]

Thanks for that clarification, stefaniesanders. The documentation is unclear: How do I insert stimulus content in New Quizzes?  

Note: Multiple questions attached to a stimulus will each appear next to the stimulus when the assessment is set to display one question at a time.

That reads like the exact opposite of what happens. Maybe instead of the phrase "multiple questions" it would be better to say "each question" ?

Edit: I just added a comment to the documentation page suggesting this.

Based on the research I just did for Leslie, the use of "question" is ambiguous.

• Is the Stimulus a question? It gets shuffled when you shuffle questions.
• Is the Stimulus a stimulus and the parts under questions? They do not get shuffled when you shuffle questions.

Your clarification rules out the use of stimulus questions for those who wanted to group their questions together into sections and only display one section at a time (here's the feature idea, but there have been several questions about it as well): https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/17044-visual-quiz-structure-in-new-quizzes-page-breaks" modifi....

I would rather have it display all questions next to the stimulus when set to one question at a time. The idea of the stimulus is that the questions are related and you might need to see the others to make sense out of it.

The more I read about stimulus questions, the more disappointed I am. Another place where Stimulus fails is as a replacement for a text-only question. I want to provide the instructions once and not have to have half of the screen taken up by the instructions, limiting the amount of space for the actual question. https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/16313-new-quizzes-text-no-question-question-type 

[lbach]

Thanks for all the testing! I appreciate the thoroughness of your reply, it's good to know what actually happens from the students' point of view.

Yeah, I was very much hoping that the questions would be shown together on the same page associated with the Stimulus to mimic page breaks. The documentation heavily implies that the questions would be shown together, but that's not what actually happens.

One way that some of my fellow faculty members are dealing with the potential for cheating in the online/remote instruction world is to set quizzes to scramble questions and show one question at a time without backtracking. It seems to work in limiting students cheating off each other during online exams, but I can't do nested questions (for example, have a student select an answer for a multiple choice question and then follow with an essay question asking them to explain their reasoning or show their work for the previous question) if I have the exam set that way, even if I use the Stimulus option.