[New Quizzes] New Quizzes: Text (no question) question type

[kevin15]

As we move from Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes, I would love to have the option to add a "Text (no question)" question type in a New Quiz (as we have in Classic Quizzes). This opens the opportunity to present a piece of content and then interact with it in a flexible way. For instance, we can use a quiz as a kind of interactive lesson. First, we present some content. Then we ask a question. Next, we interact with the question and the content on another content page. The "Stimulus" question type is great when it is fit for purpose, but there are use-cases we use often for which it is not as helpful as the "Text (no question" option we have in Classic Quizzes. This would seem to be an easy feature to add, especially as Canvas users are used to having it in their quiz toolbox.

[RobDitto]

Voted! If you're interested in this, please also consider upvoting and/or commenting on this closely-related feature idea:

• https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/16388-new-quizzes-horizontal-stimulus-prompt 

[Estefania]

"For anyone who uses quizzes as formative learning activities, the option to provide immediate feedback is critical": @kevin15, this is so important! The lack of practice quizzes in the New Quizzes is really a problem for a number of reasons, and I have raised this before:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/New-Quizzes-Practice-quizzes/idi-p/398053

I find the New Quizzes (along with other Canvas features) are designed with assessment, grading, and monitoring performance in mind, and are not as flexible as they should be when it comes to just providing opportunities purely for practice and individual learning. 

@Stef_retired, in addition to the use cases that have been posted already, another issue with the stimulus question and the side-by-side view is that the stimulus is out of sight when students scroll down through the questions - so no stimulus there anymore to refer to. And when using matching questions, the answers do not fit on the page, so they are only partially displayed to students.

[cjustin]

Currently, stimulus content without questions attached is not visible to students. Wouldn't a simple solution be to make the stimulus visible to students when no questions are attached? 

Here are some use cases: 

• A quiz with multiple parts with instructions between parts.
• Additional resources, such as help information or a bibliography, and feedback to the class. 
• Instructions for after the quiz given at the end of the quiz rather than the beginning.
• Adding context between questions or question groups where the question does not directly relate to the stimulus text.
• Demonstration of the type of answers instructors are expecting to see when students use the rich content editor for constructing their answers.

[Estefania]

Totally agree, @cjustin ! That should be an easy solution. 

[blaisdellth]

Another Text (No Question) use for @Stef_retired and team to consider:  I am a high school math teacher providing instruction and assessment in both in-person and virtual modes in three subjects areas (Algebra, Geometry, Calculus).  All students take weekly quizzes -- I write a lot of math quizzes!  I use the Text option to give prompts for several items at once (for example, Differentiate these two equations, then Integrate these other two).  Students appreciate being able to see the whole quiz at one time, for time management reasons.  Most of my questions are Show All Work exercises that do not fit into a multiple choice or short answer format.  Students do their work on paper and then upload a single image (or set of images) to a related Assignment within 5 minutes of when their quiz times out.  The Quiz format accomplishes availability control and timing for me; the Assignment format gives me the better set of feedback tools to work with in marking up student work, and avoids the issue of upload glitches within the Quiz eating up valuable quiz time.  I am fairly new to New Quizzes but have not found anything that provides the flexibility I have now in Classic Quizzes.  Like @mklein, I am concerned about migrating content.  Like @Estefania, I'm concerned about losing tools that help me teach in favor of tools that help me grade.

Thanks for the help! 

[Reshanga]

Yes a text (no question) is an absolute must for providing instruction. Stimulus questions without any questions do not appear to students. Please bring new quizzes to parity with classic quizzes..

[dskutt]

I completely agree with @scabbage, @blaisdellth, and many others here. I am a math teacher as well who uses text boxes to break tests into sections. While I could use the "stimulus" question type to do so, that means that the questions would be constrained to just the right half of the page. Also, at times, I need to give instructions at the end of a test. A simple text box would be very useful.

[ALEXISENNIS]

Have an option in the New Quizzes to include a section of text only instead of it always needing to be a question students answer.

[samuel_heer]

Hi all

Thanks to @kevin15 for this feature idea!

This is a very important feature for us as well. Because students at our university are doing quite big exams with quiz tool, we need to bring structure into the exam (f.e. titles and subtitles between differente exam parts). The "Text (no question)" option was perfect to solve this problem. Stimulus ist not usable for this because you always need a question for each stimulus.

So, for us this is an absolute must have!

Regards

[lbach]

Agreed, the ability to just have a header would be great. 

I've used the Stimulus option and run into a few issues on certain assignments:

1. As stated in previous replies, the stimulus cuts the screen in half. This can disrupt the formatting of questions and makes it difficult to include figures or tables within the text of the questions. Having something that can serve as a header to separate the assignment into sections would mean that each question under the header takes up the full width of the screen, eliminating this problem.
2. When many questions are linked to the same stimulus, the students will need to scroll within the stimulus in order to see all questions. This caused some confusion when assignments in the new quiz platform were first used - some students didn't realize they needed to scroll and left several questions blank. If we had an option to just have a header, this wouldn't happen.
3. This one might just be specific to me, but I'm using New Quizzes to build assignments for an anatomy lab. The students have a list of items to identify within their assignment. Manually moving every question associated with each model/specimen to a stimulus is time-consuming and frankly annoying. It would be so much easier to be able to place section headers in between the relevant groups of questions instead.