Import quiz question bank from spreadsheet?

[meisenhauer]

Is there some way that I can import a quiz question bank from an existing spreadsheet, so that I don't need to manually create quiz questions one by one within Canvas?  For example, I have vocabulary lists that I would love to turn into Canvas quizzes, but entering each word one at a time is way too laborious.  

[kona]

 @meisenhauer , the only way I know how to do this is using Reapondus - Respondus 4.0: Exam Authoring Tool 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @meisenhauer ...

I've never tried the spreadsheet way of uploading multiple quiz questions at one time via the Respondus 4.0 Exam Authoring Tool (though it can be done), but I would also like to suggest using either a Word or text document instead.  You can find out more about how to format questions in a document by looking through my blog post: Batch Uploading Quiz Questions with Respondus.  This blog post is in the https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/admins group here in the Canvas Community, so if you are not yet following this group, you can use the group link I've provided and then click on the "Follow" button at the top right corner of the page.  Also, you may need to click on the "Actions" >> "Join group" menu option.  I hope this helps, Meg!

[ejackson]

I tried this for the first time just yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised that it worked out pretty well! It was saved as a CSV file, so that is the format I chose when choosing the file to upload to my Respondus. I did get one warning, that there was one question not in a proper format, but it turned out to be the header row with the column titles. It published over with no problems. If you have any questions or run into problems I can try to help if you would like.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @meisenhauer ,

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie

[sbajc]

i am fairly new to canvas and am SHOCKED by how backwards and cumbersome the quiz building process is.  there are videos on how to get around this failure on the part of canvas by scamming free accounts on blackboard or respondus in order to process exports that can be imported to canvas.  canvas should be embarrassed by this.  the canvas export format is unusable, except to import back into canvas.  why?  how hard can it be to have data export into a usable format ... which also means you could allow imports in a usable format.

[kholden1]

I found this last year and it has worked well for me. I haven't tried anything but multiple choice and am currently researching other question types. I haven't used it with Scantron though. I used their Excel template and input my own information. Then used their online converter and it worked great. Hope it helps.

How to build a Quiz in K-State Online to use with Scantron 

[sbajc]

hi Katie ... this is super helpful.  i just looked at the conversion template and i think it will work!  thank you!!!

[pasquinit]

This is a very helpful tool. A comment to those who will use it the questions come in as a quiz in your course and also a folder in the Question Bank. I should have thought to change the name of the template file before I converted and uploaded it. 

Edit: I came back a year later to share this info with a colleague. The link has changed, so I include the updated version here in case anyone else is looking for it.

[jhlieth]

Thanks for coming back with the working link. I found this super helpful. I have spent hours cutting and pasting exam questions into banks out of xlsx files and being able to get that into a csv file as step to a QTI file is amazing. If Canvas would provide such tool natively that would be great.

[sheila_brown]

Maybe I didn't word my question just right.  What I am trying to do is important the answers from a quiz into Excel.  Is the procedure the same?

[Jeff76]

@jhlieth If you know how to use mail merge, you can use that to generate a word document quiz file from excel and import it to canvas using getmarked. getmarked is an import tool that my uni uses to import word document question banks into our canvas.

[ovande_furtado]

Just follow the steps shown on this YT video:
https://youtu.be/F6EDpWQHjlk