[New Quizzes] Create Item Banks from MSWord

[rledda]

It would be useful that when you create a question [item] bank at the account level being able to upload a huge number of questions once by using a word document. Now, the only way to do this is to create them one by one.

Rosalie

[ronmarx]

There seem to be so, so many of us passionate, loyal Canvas users here that are on the same page you just described in your comment. Thanks for that.

Cheers,

i.Ron

[korym_trosclair]

Could a similar thing be done as suggested through an Excel or Slides document? Excel seems to be ideally suited to adding massive quantities like this and has already been adapted for use in something like a question maker or list creator in websites like flippity.net that pull from existing Sheets documents.

[mwadmin]

This would go a long way in improving faculty attitude toward Canvas.  This is the single greatest weakness of Canvas, and where I consistently hear complaints.

[Chris_Hofer]

The Respondus 4.0 Exam Authoring Tool, which I've blogged about at Batch Uploading Quiz Questions with Respondus‌, does allow you upload a Tab/Comma Delimited (CSV) file, but I opt not to use it.  Rather, I utilize the simple "Notepad" program that comes with the Windows OS for most quizzes/tests/exams I build for instructors in Canvas.  Check out the info starting on page 49 of the linked "Canvas Personality" PDF file.

[ppan]

Thank you for the information! Does this notepad program allow you to upload questions to Canvas?

[Chris_Hofer]

 @ppan ...

All the Notepad program does is allows you to save a text file (with a *.txt extension).  You can't do any kind of basic formatting with Notepad (such as bolding, italicizing, underlining, etc.)  It's just simple, plain text.  But that works for most of my situations.  (If you needed to include basic formatting such as bold or italics, you could use another Windows program, Wordpad...where you would save that as a *.rtf file...which preserves formatting.)  You then import that *.txt file into the Respondus software...provided that you've formatted it correctly per the information in my blog post.  Hope this helps.

[ppan]

Chris,

Thank you! I have used Notepad and know its functions. My problem is how to upload a question file from Notepad or Word to Canvas quiz. We used to have Etude, which allows you to copy and paste a set of questions and it becomes a quiz. But Canvas only allows you to write questions one at a time and does not have the copy and paste multiple questions function which is a huge time saver.

[Chris_Hofer]

Yup...that's where Respondus 4.0 Exam Authoring Tool comes in.  However, I'm not sure how this will all work with the new Quizzes.Next product.  That will be a new adventure, I'm sure.

[ronmarx]

I wish that the Respondus 4.0 Exam Authoring Tool wasn't presented as a viable tool for this task. It's barely usable at all, and offers no time saving advantage whatsoever for assessments with more than 10 questions. The developer hasn't updated the product in years as detailed in my previous comments at: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8263 .

[hannahk_schratz]

When I taught 8th grades social studies, I used Canvas almost everyday in my classroom.  I liked having my students go into Canvas at the end of class each day to complete an exit ticket.  I would use the Quizzes tab in Canvas to drop in a few multiple choice questions so I check for mastery at the end of the block.  I liked that my students received immediate feedback and knew exactly what they got right or wrong before they left the class. I could look at the data to determine what I needed to reteach and/or what objectives had been mastered by my students.   The only thing that I didn’t like was how time consuming it could be at times to be put a quiz in Canvas everyday. It would be great if there was a way for teachers to share quizzes by content in Canvas or some sort of question bank that teachers could pull from when they are creating quizzes for their course.  For example, if I am giving a quiz on the causes of the Civil War, I could go to the question bank and select 3-5 questions about this topic that could be inserted easily into my Canvas quiz in my course. The questions could be sorted by grade level and subject align with state standards or Common Core standards.  It didn’t take that long to enter all of my questions each day, but it would be nice if I had some questions to pull from in Canvas. This would also be very helpful for language arts teachers. Now that I am currently teaching language arts, I would love to have some question stems available that I could use to create quizzes for my students.