Adding Images to Questions

snugent
Community Champion
8
27524

When you add images to questions in a quiz the rich content editor browser is available so the process is fairly simple; however, the process of adding images to questions in question banks requires several more steps. Also, it is important to keep in mind that the course files are open to students unless you restrict access to the folder with the quiz images. This tutorial will show you how to add images to questions securely no matter which way you choose. 

Disclaimer: At the time of this writing the current quiz tool does have some awkward processes and this blog post shows how get around some these awkward processes. Instructure is currently working on building a new quiz tool based the community's feedback. Please visit the Quizzes Next studio page to learn more about this upcoming tool. 

Step 1: Upload Images to Files and Set Permissions

Create the images in whatever program you normally would (Photoshop, Paint, etc.) and save them to a local drive. In a Canvas course go to Files on the left navigation. Create a folder with the name quiz-images or something similar. Set the permissions for this folder to Restricted Access, Hidden, files inside will be available with links. It is extremely important that you choose this option. If you unpublish the folder, students WILL NOT have access to the images when they are taking the quiz. Upload all the quiz images to this folder. View the following guides for details on how to complete this step. 

Step 2: Adding the Images to Questions

In all question types you can add images to question box and feedback boxes; however, images can only be added in the answer boxes in the multiple choice and multiple answer question types. I also highly recommend viewing Kona Jones'‌ blog post about quiz security and Stefanie Sanders' post about using multiple drop downs question with images. 

Option 1: Adding Images to Questions in a Quiz

The guides listed below shows you how to create a quiz and add content to the questions. When creating questions in a quiz the rich content editor browser will be available allowing you to choose the images you previously uploaded. Note: All the questions you create in a quiz will have a copy stored in a question bank called "Unfiled Questions".  You can go to the question banks and organized the questions as desired. This is not ideal for organization so it may be best to create questions in question banks so they are organized as desired. See option 2 below. 

Option 2: Adding Images to Questions in Question Bank

You can create questions in question banks. This allows you to organize questions by bank which makes it much easier to add questions to a quiz using the Find Answers option. View the following guides for details on question banks.

How to Use the Rich Content Editor Toolbar to Add Images (updated)

As of the November 17, 2018 release you can now upload images directly from the rich content editor. See the following guide for details. 

How do I embed images from Canvas into the Rich Content Editor as an instructor? 

8 Comments
laurakgibbs
Community Champion

I don't use quizzes with images, but I am interested in file management in general in Canvas, so I clicked on this, and I am so glad that I did: it's THE DOCTOR!

That made my day.

And it is also very informative, so I have bookmarked to share with other faculty at my school who may be trying to figure all this out. Thank you for sharing here, snugent‌!

ejackson
Community Champion

This is the process I use to add images to question bank questions when I help our instructors. However, it gets extremely time-consuming when you have a large question bank (some I work with have over 200 questions) and a large number of the questions have images. We use Respondus to publish the question banks to Canvas, but the images don't publish over and must be added after publishing. It takes a LOT of time. And yes, I know there is a way to export/import the question bank so that the images come in the questions, but I have had that not always work for me. It's frustrating..... but the process you have outlined, while time-consuming, does work very well. I am still keeping my fingers crossed that one day Canvas and Respondus will get their act together and decide to play nice with each other, and that images will publish over, as they do with other LMS's. 🙂

snugent
Community Champion

I always like to have fun with the examples and I love sci-fi. My daughter got me hooked on Dr Who. 

snugent
Community Champion

I think I remember you mentioned the Respondus issue before. I agree! I wish Respondus would update its software so it is more modern and works with Canvas better. 

ejackson
Community Champion

You're right, Susan. I have mentioned it many, MANY times. What I really can't figure out is why Respondus works well publishing images with other LMS programs, but not Canvas. It just gets so darn frustrating! *sigh*

kimberly_smith1
Community Participant

Hello snugent ,

I frequently use images in my question banks. However, I recently tried to embed an animated GIF image. This seemed fine while viewing the question in the Question Bank, but the image did not animate when the question was pulled from the Bank as part of a quiz. Might you have any suggestions?

snugent
Community Champion

Hi Kimberly

I tested embedding an animated gif and linking to the bank of questions. I didn't see any issues. It appears from my test that the animation should display in the quiz, question bank, and while editing the question. The only thing I can think of is that you may have a duplicate question where one has the animated gif and other doesn't??

kimberly_smith1
Community Participant

Thank you for looking into this for me snugent Smiley Happy

This is very helpful in that I know it is at least possible to successfully embed a gif this way. I don't believe I have a duplicate question, but will check and then test this again.