New Quizzes in Course Copied from Previous Year Says Students Have Already Taken Quiz

[deborah_oakley1]

Dear Canvas Hivemind,

I teach a university level lecture class using Canvas, and created the course from my previous year's content. I had created a quiz question bank last year with the intent of reusing the questions from year to year.

So I'm attempting to use items from this question bank for my last quiz this semester, but when I try to modify them all the questions are saying that "Some students have already submitted answers for this item! You can apply your edits to a copy of this item which will only be seen by students that have not taken the assessment."

But no one has taken this assessment that is being newly created from the question bank, so why am I getting a message for this? If I have to make copies of every question, that seems to defeat the purpose of having a master question bank.

What am I missing here?

Thanks,

Deborah

[DeletedUser · Accepted solution]

That message they put isn’t very clear.  I tested that before.  All that means is that if any student who have seen the question in a quiz, then their current quiz attempt won’t show any changes you made.  But, if they attempt the same quiz again, or if any student who haven’t seen that question in a quiz before, they’ll see your latest version.

[deborah_oakley1]

Having to hit "edit a copy" every time is rather annoying if it doesn't mean anything for a new class. It's like the question is tied to a particular class answer, even when it's been copied to another, completely new, class. Maybe someone with some knowledge of the inner workings of Canvas can explain more?

[deborah_oakley1]

Perhaps someone from Canvas can explain this? I can't find anything on this. 

Why should a test bank from a previous year have any connection to student answers? It makes no sense to have to 'edit a copy' for every single question and seems counter to the idea of having a test bank in the first place.

[LESLIEDANNELLY]

Checking in - any reply on this?  I'm having the same problem.  This quiz has not been taken by any student in any course, yet I'm getting the same message.  ??

[mtutin]

I don't have in depth knowledge on the inner workings of Canvas, but we have had this experience too. After contacting Canvas support, we were told that message will appear any time a question has been seen or answered within a quiz attempt, even in previous semester courses. You have to click "Edit a Copy" to edit the question for students who have not seen or answered that question. Previous versions of the question will remain unchanged. It is definitely very confusing.

[kirsten_ryall]

Wow, I wasn't aware of that. Is that expected behaviour? Sounds like it is going to make question bank roll-over between semesters a very painful experience. Be good to hear from someone in Instructure about any plans for this. And if it is expected behaviour then it sounds like it has not been well documented or communicated and an improvement may be required.

[TominOslo]

I disagree that this problem is solved. If I have understood it correctly the "solution" is just to accept and to live with the problem by pressing Edit a Copy for every question.  The error message is wrong, since no students have answered this new copy of the quiz. The problem is clearly a bug and should be corrected by the programmers, not be labelled as solved..... 

[PatrickCoin]

I agree, that does not seem like an acceptable solution, and it raised further questions about what happens to the question bank with "copies" of all the questions. Are there now duplicate copies of the questions in the bank, so the banks will just grow in size geometrically? I pull questions randomly from question banks in some assessments, so I need to understand what is happening to them. I have not encountered the original issue myself, but I am new to Canvas and would like to track this issue.

[PatrickCoin]

Following up, I just looked at this issue in detail. I ran one class with new quizzes this summer. After conclusion of the class, imported it into a template class with no students and where nothing is published. I get the same confusing dialog box. It is not clear  to me that changes made to the item banks will propagate correctly into the current edition of the class--I would like to see some verification of that from the LMS when I look at the item bank. (Perhaps it is there, but it is unclear.) From what users are saying above, newly-published quizzes should be working off of "the copy", so edits should be implemented. I will attempt to test that.

It would be nice to see some more explanation from Instructure on how this feature works. If there is documentation anywhere, please anyone, point me to it.

[deborah_oakley1]

I'm the original poster of this question from more than three years ago. Once again I'm editing a quiz bank question and get the message that a copy needs to be made. Went online to see if any solution and the first thing that comes up is this thread! Very frustrating that there is no clear resolution after so much time. And all I wanted to do was check if the answer feedback was what I wanted, and yet I have to make a copy just to look at that? Canvas is great overall, but this particular issue NEEDS WORK!

[SharonBurton]

This is super annoying and I consider this behavior a bug. When can we get it fixed? I reuse my item banks quarter after quarter,  year after year, adding and removing as we go. 

[PatrickCoin]

Agreed. I do not think this issue is solved, as I described in a recent post above. At the very least, that dialog box text about "editing a copy" needs to be clarified. 

If not an actual bug, this is a real usability issue, as is noted above by others. My classes are assessment-heavy, with about forty item banks, each containing 10-50 questions, for a total of more than 500 questions for each class. The hassle of clicking through that dialog box for each edit is considerable, and it is unclear where those edits are being applied. I am hoping to see some further response from Instructure sometime soon.