Allow New Quizzes fill in the blanks to have multiple blanks on different lines

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

 

The old quiz system allows multiple blanks to be placed anywhere within a question; even in a table.  the new system does not.  In the old system I could pose an order of operations questions as:

 

2^2 + 4 -10/3=

[BLANK TO FILL IN]=

[BLANK TO FILL IN]=

[BLANK TO FILL IN]=

[BLANK TO FILL IN]

 

In the new system they have to be on the same line and thus create confusion.  I also cannot have them fill in missing values from a table in the new system either.  The way the old system handled multiple blanks was much more conducive to accurately measuring if students know what to do.

65 Comments
canderson2
Community Explorer

I don't have a lot more to add to this conversation, other than to echo that the RCE for all questions and the instructions would be very helpful. I would like to be able to place blanks for fill in the blank questions where I'd like them and not have a weird text wrapping that makes it look confusing for students.

I guess when I'm trying to use Canvas features or go outside of Canvas for features that will allow me to structure assessments in a way that I'd like to communicate then, I will have to look at what will help me communicate best.

At this point, I'm struggling with trying to adequately communicate to my students the material I want to communicate to them using Canvas. Without the RCE and a little more control, these features are essentially worthless. Strong sentiment, I guess, but I've been fighting adding content for a good hour+ and cannot see the benefit of the New Quizzes, ESPECIALLY without the RCE for the instructions AND the questions. I'm feeling like I'm wasting my time. And it's not a learning curve issue; it's having to reword questions to get them to appear like I want them to. Argh! 😠

mdthomas
Community Contributor

To add to this conversation, we also need the Rich Content Editor to be included with the Fill in the Blank question area to be able to adjust spacing. We have noticed that this question type is treating everything as a single "paragraph" versus the ability to create line breaks.

Example from Classic Quizzes, clearly shows which Fill in the Blank is associated with which statement.

IDD-4809_Classic_Fill_in_Blank.png

 

However, the same question in New Quizzes is much more unclear to the student due to the line spacing.IDD-4809_NQ_Fill_in_Blank.png

 

 

Jess_M
Community Participant

This is a valuable functionality. I really hope this is fixed. It's disappointing that functionality was removed. 

hochmucr
Community Participant

We are starting a new school year, Canvas says the classic quizzes is on the way out - and still there is no answer to this problem or any indication that it is even being considered.  I have loved Canvas until new quizzes came out. So much promise - but so much that it cannot do. It seems that it was programmed by people who never used it as teachers. Where do we see the results after the teachers give input? Please Canvas - listen and respond.

JPMorgan1178
Community Member

I figured out a temporary fix for this.

If you have a sentence that you want to fill in the blanks for example:

The ______fox jumped over the _____ dog.

You would put this into the question stem with letters or numbers in the blank spot:

The ___a___fox jumped over the ___b__ dog.

Then on the line "Type a statement, select text, and press Enter to create a new blank," I put "a: the word, b: the word" and highlighted "the word" so that I could do a fill in the blank or dropdown etc.

I'm not sure if this will work for you and is quite clunky compared to how it used to be, but it may work in the interim.

BethCrook
Community Coach
Community Coach

@JPMorgan1178  Does that allow partial credit for that question type?  I don't love it, but good discovery.

Estefania
Community Explorer

@BethCrook, I have been using a similar workaround as what @JPMorgan1178 suggested and my experience is that students do get partial credit. It is something, but still not good enough in my opinion, given that Classic Quizzes allowed us to fully edit the text in fill the blank questions and even use tables.

PeeJayar_AUT
Community Member

Agreed, having no line breaks creates a very untidy question.

hochmucr
Community Participant

Is no one posting to this Idea Conversation, because we don't see any progress in this area? So many other bells and whistles are being added - but this basic functionality is being left behind. Please prioritize basic functioning over the extras. My teachers keep saying they just hate new quizzes because of this feature and the inability of partial credit. Please give us a timeline for a solution.

nathangartner
Community Member

This needs to be implemented. It is horrific to attempt to ask more complicated questions, especially when making multiple versions. Some people recommend tying them to a stimulus, but if there are multiple possible questions I am using for a given stimulus (multiple readings with different questions related to that reading, for instance), the stimulus fix just doesn't cut it.