[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

[KristinL]

  Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2023-06-17) 

[KristinL]

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2023-06-17) 

[cpadavano]

Problem statement:

This idea was shared with the community before, but it was not deployed in the way the author described (https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/New-Quizzes-Practice-quizzes/idi-p/398053). Currently, even though New Quizzes has the option not to count the grade to the gradebook or students' grades, the non-graded New Quizzes still appear in the Course Summary of a Canvas course.

Proposed solution:

It would be helpful if "Practice New Quizzes" could not appear in the Course Summary like Classic Quiz's practice quizzes. Otherwise, students will still be overwhelmed with a lengthy Course Summary and think they need to complete all the items listed for a grade.

User role(s):

student

[KristinL]

Hi! Today, we noted (with the help of a Community member) that this idea was not fulfilled with the Canvas Release Notes (2023-06-17). We are, therefore, returning it to the Added to Theme status.

[CanvasCCUser]

Problem statement:

No functionality exists to set up a Practice Quiz or true Survey in Canvas that does not count for points (in other words, it must post to the grade book and it clutters up the grades and student To Do Lists). While this can currently be done in "Classic Quizzes", the student analysis report that can be downloaded to see how students do on the quiz or what their answers are to the survey is a jumbled mess of a CSV. Student names are not in alphabetical order by last name and the only way to see which students have not completed the survey or practice quiz is to go into the "Moderate" section. There is no "Message Students Who" functionality to message students to encourage them to complete the Survey and Practice Quiz. Why do instructors want and NEED this? Students need low stakes quizzes to practice concepts. Sometimes we like to do these quizzes in class to act as knowledge checks without penalizing them. At the same time, we may want to reward them for scoring well on the quiz by giving them extra credit for scoring well. Surveys are the best way to 1) get to know students and 2) get feedback midterm to determine improvements to the course. In most if not all cases, we just want the students to complete the survey. The best way to do this is to give them extra credit for completing it. There is currently no "message students who" function for this, so if students haven't completed the survey, we need to manually go into Moderation to figure out who hasn't done it and then reach out to them. BIGGEST ISSUES: -Creating practice quizzes set to zero or surveys through New Quizzes results in extra grade columns in the grade book that will burden students and instructors -Using classic quizzes in its current form to administer practice quizzes and surveys results in EXTRA WORK for the instructor. For example, I use practice quizzes as a knowledge check. If a student scores a 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 5 points on the quiz, I will give them 1 extra credit point. However, since I want to know how they actually scored on it, I have to do a practice quiz through classic quizzes, I cannot set it to zero. Then to calculate the extra credit points, I have to download each student analysis quiz result as a CSV, reorder students alphabetically by last name (requires me to manipulate the data in word, then transfer it back to Excel), then determine who was absent that day to give them zero points, then calculate how many extra credit points to give them. This amount of work is absolutely unnecessary.

Proposed solution:

Simplest solutions: -Keep the Classic Quiz functionality for Practice Quizzes and Surveys, but make sure the Student Analysis report downloads as you would download scores from the gradebook: students are listed in alphabetical order by last name and any students who didn't complete the quiz would have a blank grade. -Practice quizzes and Surveys would NOT post to Canvas gradebook, but could still be accessed by the student (if placed in a module) or instructor (in Quizzes area). -Set up the ability to "Message Students Who" have not completed the practice quiz or survey. This would be very helpful. I realize somewhere it was posted that Classic Quizzes was sunset and is no longer supported. This is a mistake. I dislike New Quizzes (I KNOW I am not the only one) and the extra functionality New Quizzes brings is not worth the extra time Instructure is spending on it. Why not fix functionality with Classic Quizzes for something I guarantee more instructors want??? We don't want additional or features in New Quizzes, we want practice quizzes and surveys. If it is easier to do it in New Quizzes, fine. But Classic Quizzes seems like a more user friendly platform.

User role(s):

instructor