[New Quizzes] New Quizzes Question Type - Drawing

Many of our fully-online courses (particularly in science and math) require that students draw a diagram or process in their assessments, and when combined with proctoring tools, this becomes a complicated process.  The current workaround is that students download a PDF as a question type within a proctored exam and submit this later as an assignment submission, but there are many technological and time-consuming issues with this process for both students and instructors, including confusion about the numerous steps, printing issues, scanning issues, uploading, file type errors, verifying that students completed the drawing within the time allotted, and others. 

 

This would be vastly improved and streamlined if instructors could simply create a "drawing" type question directly in Canvas where students would use a mouse or other device to input lines and text that would then be manually graded by the instructor.

 

It would be a very helpful function to allow instructors to annotate drawing corrections directly on the student's entry when grading.

 

Note: Quizzes.next currently presents a number of technological issues with our proctoring tools, and instructors have expressed that using a multiple choice question where students would simply recognize the correct drawing from a list is unacceptable for their learning outcomes.

 

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73 Comments
TinaGilligan
Community Member

As a High School Math Teacher I find Canvas has too many limitations for my students and myself. When creating an assignment or quiz it would be nice to be able to be able to make quizzes that allowed me to make questions using more than just the Essay Question type answers in order for students to be able to use the Math Editor for their answers. I would like to be able to give them fill in the blank questions, graphing questions, etc. I noticed someone posted the possibility of being able to draw in Canvas. That sounds like an excellent idea. With so many of the computers, tablets, and smart phones being touch screen this would be ideal for students and teachers to have more control over what they are "writing" down for their questions and answers. They would be able to draw graphs, make charts, and show a lot of other mathematical features that at present are unavailable on Canvas. I can see where science, art, and other subject teachers would appreciate this as well. 

cvalle
Community Participant

Also please incorporate the ability to draw the "correct" answer for the purpose of grading. When we view a student's response in speedgrader it should be displayed alongside the "correct" answer.

cdunn4
Community Explorer

drawing would be very helpful.  Must include a feature to draw straight lines .

aaron_bahmer
Community Contributor

@cvalle & @cdunn4  Thse are both amazing additions to this suggestion. Thanks for more, important features!

madeline_gorley
Community Explorer

I agree! How do we vote YES to this?

New Math Quiz Feature - Sketch a Graph
We would like to be able to embed graph paper into a quiz where students can draw a sketch of the graph using their stylus. Desmos has a feature that allows students to draw a sketch. I wonder if Canvas would collaborate with Desmos? We would like the graph paper to be embedded directly into the quiz so that lockdown browser could still be used.
 
Although it would be great to have features that help students graph a line or circle, I would still like students to have the ability to sketch curves and asymptotes.
 
Here is a quiz question I assigned on a recent Calculus quiz: 
madeline_gorley_0-1619111691104.png

 

 
This was a non-calculator quiz where students had to use derivative tests to come up with a sketch of the graph. 
Unfortunately, I could not use lockdown browser for this quiz since students had to open up a new window to use Kami to submit their sketches. 
 
I have tried to submit this as a Canvas Feature Idea on the Canvas site awhile back, but nothing ever ended up happening.
cvalle
Community Participant

I you added a drawing tool to the RCE we could just use an essay type question. No need to create a new question type.

cindyk
Community Participant

One of the fundamental processes for modeling is sketching your idea.  Currently, we have students draw on paper, snap a pic, and upload to the quiz.  Some students don't bring paper since we are a 1-1 district now, don't ask for some (or are at home and can't), so don't answer those questions.  This feature would increase equity!

LoganChristense
Community Member

All students can now annotate on a PDF. Before it was only available on mobile devices, but now students on computer can as well. It's the best option I've seen so far; giving an assessment with a graph as the PDF and then asking students to draw the appropriate graph. 

lic
Community Participant

Ideally there would be the option of adding a correct answer with an automatic comparison, where we could set some kind of tolerance for errors.

lalee24601
Community Explorer

Yes, please. It would allow short answer/calculation questions with 'show your work' as part of the requirement and help us cut out the last bit of paper on a quiz/test.