[New Quizzes] Practice quizzes

[Estefania]

I  am updating my course for the upcoming academic year and I have stumbled upon a major roadblock regarding quizzes. 

With the Classic Quizzes set to disappear next summer, it doesn't seem worth my while to rely on them, but the New Quizzes are lacking a key feature: PRACTICE QUIZZES. 

The lack of practice quizzes is a major issue for me and other colleagues because, as language teachers, we rely massively on quizzes (especially this year that we are set to be doing a lot of our teaching online). I know that it is possible to set the New Quizzes so that they are worth 0 points and do not count towards the grades, but the fact that they HAVE to be set as an assignment creates a huge problem: without practice quizzes, every single quiz will appear in the syllabus and I would have at least 6 quizzes per week in a 24 week course! This will get very messy, very fast.

I know I can just hide the course summary in the syllabus, but that still would leave us with the problem of students having tens of confusing "assignments" on their calendar (I believe they still would appear under "undated"). Also, I just discovered that hidding the course summary hides the mini calendar and assignment weighting information on the right side of the page too, which renders the syllabus pretty much useless!

Being able to just have the quizzes as practice and add them to the modules where necessary without them being categorised as assignments is the ideal, as it is the case with Classic Quizzes. They may not be as fancy, but they are much more user friendly. 

I cannot understand why the choice was made to remove this essential option - a newer engine should offer the same features as the prior one plus additional ones, not less! I really hope this is something that will be implemented soon. 

Estefanía

[Estefania]

I just realised this also affects the grades page quite badly. So even if I give up on the Syllabus features by hidding the course summary and calendar, the students will still have to scroll through the tens of non-graded quizzes in order to be able to see their exam grades! 

[Steven_S]

While it is possible to adjust settings so that a New Quiz is not counted in grades, this retains other problems that a true practice quiz would solve:

1. The not-counted-but-graded quizzes clutter the student grades view distracting from the actual grades in the course.
2. The late penalty is applied to not-counted-but-graded quizzes, and even when keep the highest grade is selected, the most recent of duplicate starting scores is retained with the late penalty added.  This sends the wrong message to students about the retake value of practice quizzes, and is contrary to "keep the highest score" in general.
3. Modules use the score after the late penalty is applied to not-counted-but-graded new quizzes to establish whether module requirements to "score at least" are met.  This means a module requirement requiring students to achieve a score of 70% correct on a not-counted-but-graded new quiz, in a course with a 10% per day late penalty, becomes impossible to meet once it is more than 3 days late.  The linear nature of module requirements means that a not-counted-but-graded new quiz could completely block a student's progress. 

Practice quizzes are not impacted by the late penalty at all and do not show up in the grade book.  Either the practice quiz function needs to expand to new quizzes or the old quiz engine needs to be retained for practice quizzes.

[Estefania]

Exactly - thank you, @Steven_S ! The elimination of practice quizzes affects a lot of aspects in Canvas and has a big impact on how you can and cannot set up a course. It is very limiting and has a lot of negative consequences that I don't think were thought through.

[mathieu]

Thanks for bringing this up, @Stef_retired .  There is an obvious dearth in the New Quizzes feature set compared to old quizzes or quizzes in any other LMS for that matter.  It is inexplicable to me why Instructure continues prioritise minor features (such as history in the latest release) over much more impactful changes such as this one.  Let's hope for someone is reading these threads.

All the best

[andrea_earl]

I agree with the above. Practice Quizzes and "survey" (ungraded) options are wonderful tools that we loose in New Quizzes. I don't want to send my students out of Canvas to complete a survey or practice. Thank you. 

[rislis]

I hate New Quizzes, honestly. I don't like the "look." I think it's harder for teachers to edit and grade. No lockdown browser available. No practice quizzes and survey options?  What else am I missing?

And you're going to force us to use this product next summer? Sure hope you make some major changes before that happens.

[Steven_S]

@rislis  I also need practice quizzes, and I hope this idea will result in that function being added sooner rather than later.  For now, my practice quizzes are still in classic quizzes to avoid the problem. 

You might like to know that lockdown browser now works with new quizzes.  As a result I have been able to transfer my graded quizzes to new quizzes.  I do not find it dramatically more difficult to use - except if I start a question by creating the wrong question type, or start writing my prompt in the question title box.  Those work flow steps will require some time to get used to, but classic quizzes had quirks we got used to also.

[rislis]

Thanks for the update, @Steven_S ! Much appreciated!

[jasonappel]

This is an absolute no-brainer. Hoping this is corrected very soon!