Creating Questions with immediate feedback

[JannetteDeng]

Hi all,

I am a Instructional Designer trying to find a solution/ work-around to build the following activity type:

- a question that allows short or long responses (a few sentences to a paragraph)

- ungraded (no instructor will be manually releasing feedback)

- allows for immediate general feedback (this is a must)

Example:

Question

A gambler at a roulette table notices that the past 12 spins of the wheel have landed on black.

The gambler is going to bet on either red or black on the next spin. What would you advise and why?

General Feedback

This example highlights two seemingly contradictory biases regarding randomness. On the one hand, sometimes we tend to have a hot hand fallacy, believing that winners of games of chance will continue winning; on the other hand, sometimes we tend to have a gambler's fallacy, believing that a random sequence tends to balance itself. When and why these two biases happen is still an ongoing debate in academia.

I have tested New Quizzes- Essay but it requires grading to release the feedback. I have replicated it in Classic Quizzes- Essay which does allow immediate feedback, however, I'm not sure how much more longer these Classic versions will be around before Canvas decides to remove them.

Many thanks in advance.

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

One workaround is to include a "custom feedback" on the quiz itself, by going to the settings tab on the new quizzes build page.

Note that I only tested it with the "test student", I imagine it works the same with real students.

This is how it looks like, the "custom feedback with results" comes under the "From your instructor" header:

[dbrace]

Hi @JannetteDeng,

I do not have an answer for you because I had the same experience with what I designed for a "Classic Quiz" (which works as intended) and a "New Quiz" (which does not work as intended). It seems that, even when...

1. a "New Quiz" is worth 0 points
2. a "New Quiz" is configured so that...
   1. "Do not count this assignment towards the final grade" is enabled
   2. "Do not display in gradebook or the student's grade page" is enabled
3. an essay question in a "New Quiz" is worth 0 points
4. an essay question is provided with a response in the "Provide general feedback (regardless of an answer)"

... the "New Quiz" system will not release the grade (which would a 0) or any feedback (even general feedback) unless a grade is released (even though it would be a 0).

Besides submitting this as a new idea in the community, I am curious to know if anyone else anything to say.

-Doug

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

One workaround is to include a "custom feedback" on the quiz itself, by going to the settings tab on the new quizzes build page.

Note that I only tested it with the "test student", I imagine it works the same with real students.

This is how it looks like, the "custom feedback with results" comes under the "From your instructor" header:

[dbrace]

Thanks for sharing that option, @Gabriel33.

One downside to that is if the "New Quiz" has multiple essay questions.

An instructor/designer could work around that by (since it is available with entering the custom feedback) using the RCE to format the feedback in a way that overcomes that limitation.

-Doug

[Gabriel33]

I agree, that's just one feedback for the whole quiz. Originally I thought to mention it as applying specifically to the request of the activity being "a question...", but I forgot to add that before posting.

Indeed, the workaround for multiple questions is to make use of numbered lists or headings to separate the questions' replies in a clear way.

[JannetteDeng]

Hi Doug,

That's a good pick up. Could you please elaborate what you mean by formatting the custom feedback to overcome the single question limitation?

[dbrace · Accepted solution]

@JannetteDeng, please see the screenshot that is attached for an example of what I mean.

My example will hopefully help you with your comment from earlier today.

In my opinion, for the situation that you have presented, I would only use custom feedback for questions where normally an instructor should be manually grading the question and use the correct, incorrect, and general feedback fields for questions that are auto-graded.

-Doug

[Gabriel33]

@dbrace's image opens a second way of giving out comments to the essay questions: have a multiple choice question afterwards whose only purpose is to give feedback:

Q: Do you want to see feedback for the item above?
Option 1: Yes!
Option 2: Yes, please!

[JannetteDeng]

Amazing, that is also a clever workaround, thanks so much Doug, highly appreciated!

[JannetteDeng]

Thanks for this @Gabriel33 , totally didn't realize this option and it seems to suit my use case!

[james_whalley]

@JannetteDeng As far as Classic Quizzes being around, I would imagine that you will get at least a few years out of anything you build new in there. There has been no sunset date communicated and Instructure knows they will need to leave a long runway for people to make the migration to New Quizzes comfortably.

[Gabriel33]

While I hope you are right, one issue is that some institutions may force a move to new quizzes before Instructure.

@chriscas mentioned his institution is doing that next month already: Solved: Classic Quiz Ending - Instructure Community

[chriscas]

Indeed!  We have 33 more days until classic quiz creation at my institution will no longer be available (and quizzes will be auto-migrated from classic to new as course content it imported into new course shells for our Summer 2025 semester and beyond.

-Chris

[james_whalley]

@chriscas You are brave. Please be sure to share back anything you learn during this enforcement.

[Maeve_McCooey]

@chriscas I second @james_whalley we would be super interested in how this goes for you guys too!

[JannetteDeng]

Thanks to everyone for all your valuable input!

It seems that @Gabriel33 's solution on using 'custom feedback' works for my single essay question case.

Now I'm thinking about all other forms of activities I'm building such as New Quiz- Fill In The Gap which does allow 'general feedback' (inserted into the speech icon) to be immediately released upon completion with the build settings shown in the attachment.

Because of the inconsistencies with immediate feedback capabilities between the New Quiz activities, does anyone know the difference between the those two forms of feedback and should I stick to 'custom feedback' for all?

Cheers

[Gabriel33]

I think it is better to stick to one, as mixing the two forms of feedback may lead the student to missing one or the other.

Say questions 1, 2, 3 and 5 are essays, and 4 is multiple choice. If you post feedback for questions 1, 2, 3 and 5 as the "custom feedback" in the top, and the feedback for question 4 in the bottom, together with the question, more than a few students are likely to miss it.

You can mention in the custom feedback that question 4 has its own feedback, but if you are doing that, why not just write it in the top? Unless you really need to take advantage of the right/wrong answer feedback, I can't see any other benefit to splitting them.

[dbrace]

Yeah, mixing the different feedback areas could be confusing; unless you make some sort of reference in the custom area and/or want to use the correct and incorrect feedback areas for auto-graded questions.

-Doug

[jon_mason]

There's an idea for actually solving the problem and allowing feedback on manually-marked questions to be shown immediately without grading, here: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Ideas/New-Quizzes-General-Feedback-and-Correct-Answer-Disp...