New Quizzes: Stopping the Random Order of Dropdown Question Options

[aaron_ayres]

I recently migrated a quiz created with the current version of Quizzes in Canvas with New Quizzes.  Some of the questions on the quiz were multiple drop-down questions with multiple options for each drop-down entry.  After some necessary reformatting I previewed the quiz in New Quizzes and to my amazement the options for the drop-down questions were presented in random order, even though I needed the options in the order I have the choices listed in Build section.  Is there a way to stop the randomizing of these options for these questions?

Thanks!

[Robbie_Grant]

 @aaron_ayres ,

First, I want to apologize for your question sitting in the community for so long without a response.

Second, it looks like you have stumped the Canvas Community.  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.

How we keep your questions flowing!‌

Robbie

[RyanLidster]

Hello. It's been five years now, and this question is not answered. I'm hoping that Canvas has a solution to this because five years is a very, very long turn around time.

[mjennings]

@Robbie_Grant I am experiencing this as well. I am not sure there is workaround, but if somebody has one I would love to know.

[sandman]

I have this question as well.  I have not selected "Randomize Answers" and yet the dropdown menu is always randomized.  It is very frustrating when you are asking students to select from a sequential list when the sequence keeps changing.  This seems like an easy fix to make.

[SoniaHaiduc]

Is there a solution to this issue? I am facing this issue as well and it is so frustrating. 

[cstrikwerda · Accepted solution]

Hello @aaron_ayres and thanks for posting in the Community!

It seems we are looking into the ordering of answers in the multiple drop-down questions with multiple options for each drop-down entry, and seeing the options randomized in that list. When testing this with the same steps you were, I am not seeing my drop down lists randomized when migrated. I created a Classic Quiz and created a Multiple Drop Down question with ordered answers for those drop down menus. Then migrated to New Quizzes.

In my tests, my answers in my drop down menus were not reordered, so it seems the function should retain the order of the answers when migrating from Classic to New Quizzes. If you are seeing something otherwise, we would want to look at trying the migrate option again to see if they come across in the correct order.

If the order is not being retained this is something you could reach out to Canvas Support about and they would be glad to help make sure your questions answers are being ordered how you would like. 

[mjennings]

Hey @cstrikwerda thanks for looking into this. I am not sure for @aaron_ayres, but for me this is not happening on migrated questions but on ones that are build natively in New Quizzes and is showing a randomized order for students. This is particularly on Fill in the Blank with the dropdown answer. See images below. There are use cases where I want the list to retain the order listed when creating and the fact that I could select a different answer to be correct would lead me to believe that the list would not be random. The first image shows how I created the question and the second how it appears to students. The drop down is randomized.

  

[nwarnberg]

I experience the same thing as mjennings.

[Anya_]

This isn't a solution as the problem persists unfortunately.  New quizzes randomizes the order of the dropdown in fill in the blank questions. No amount of trying to game the order truly fixes it for me. It seems to pick a new randomization every time you save the question.

[Peter_Disabb]

I found a solution (or really workaround). I exported the quiz as QTI file then re-imported that file and it reset the answer choice order to be the order it is in "build" mode.

So hopefully that works for other people.

[RyanLidster]

As several others have pointed out going back literal years, this is not a solution, it does not actually work on several people's (including my) migrated quiz, and it's a problem. 

[Michael_Johnso6]

Still randomizing the drop downs in the new quiz editor.  Can not find anyway to fix even if the randomize answers button is turned off.  Please fix.

[Anya_]

Not sure why this is marked as solved. The issue persists! I filed a support request, hopefully this will finally get acknowledged by Instructure as an issue. 

[Anya_]

Update: Canvas reports the randomization is intended behavior and you should circumvent it by using the Word Bank option instead of Dropdowns (don't really see how to control the order of the Word Bank options either, though).

[paulamiranda]

Hello, this issue has come up for one of our faculty, who would like to have the drop-down answer options in the same order that they are written. We've been told by Canvas Support that this is the expected behavior, and I understand that there are use cases where shuffling the order is needed. However, if it is the expected behavior, then why do these question types retain their order when the quizzes are migrated from Classic?

My suggested feature improvement here is to add a Shuffle Choices setting, like there is for Multiple Choice questions, to allow faculty flexibility in how they create their quizzes.

"Shuffle Choices" setting in a New Quizzes Multiple Choice question type