[ARCHIVED] HTML code in Question Banks

[LindsayAbraham]

My school switched from Moodle to Canvas, importing all course content. One of the teachers has brought to my attention that question banks that migrated over are showing HTML code in the answers. Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening, and is there an efficient way to fix it? 

Here is what it looks like:

The teacher reported that this has happened with other quizzes; sometime the code is visible from the teacher's point of view, but not from the students. In this case, it is visible from the student's point of view. 

I really would hate to have to edit each answer individually- help!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @LindsayAbraham ...

Full disclosure, I have next to no experience with Moodle.  (I tried using it many years ago only for a few days for a project I was working on for my church.)  From the screen shot that you provided, it looks like the questions that were carried over from Moodle had a specific font selected (Times New Roman).  Do you know if the font type, size, and color (shown by that code) is a common thing that is carrying over as you are migrating content from Moodle?  Or, I wonder if this is just a specific instance where the instructor was using a specific font?  Also, what happens when you edit that question?  Do you see HTML code in the text boxes where the various selections would normally show?  Or, do you only see single words there such as "dorsal" or "rostral"?  Any other details that we can get from you would be helpful...thanks!

[LindsayAbraham]

Hi, @Chris_Hofer !

So, I noticed this same issue in another course (different program, different teacher) so I assume there are more cases out there at our school. It is not widespread enough for me to be getting lots of emails about it, or maybe teachers are just deleting the tags themselves. From what I've seen so far, it appears so only be on the matching questions.

When I edit the question, the code shows up for me and I am able to delete it.

I've tried migrating to a New Quiz (these are Classic Quizzes), and also adding them to item banks and back into a New Quiz. The code tags always travel with the questions. 

One teacher told me these quizzes were built in Moodle, while I believe another teacher may have imported them from a test bank they got from a publisher. 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi there, @LindsayAbraham ...

Thanks for the reply.  That certainly sounds strange.  Unfortunately, I don't really have an explanation for you.  I suppose anything is possible when you are migrating from one LMS to another, so it wouldn't be all that surprising to me to learn that some things did not carry over to Canvas like you thought they should.  (We had an issue with our discussion topics when we migrated from Pearson eCollege's LearningStudio to Canvas back in 2014/2015.)  Hopefully someone will be able to chime in here that has had a similar experience.

One other thing to try would be to contact the folks at the Canvas Help Desk.  Maybe they can somehow take a look at your import file to see if there are elements in the file that would be causing those HTML elements to show up in your quiz questions.  How do I contact Canvas Support? - Canvas Community

Keep us posted on this by providing an update below once you've been able to find any new info...thanks!