[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]

If I haven't misunderstood your comments,  @hannahk_schratz ‌, you can share questions as you mused using Canvas as it exists currently. Question banks and quizzes can be shared with your colleagues in any number of ways including posting them on Canvas Commons. You can select specific questions to create subsets that could be used in the formative manner you like.

The time-consuming process of creating questions within Canvas is the subject of this idea discussion. Many of us are merely trying to convert assessments from paper or digital files into QTI-compliant questions to populate Canvas quizzes and question banks, as you recognized. A built-in conversion function would pretty much be a complete solution to the problem expressed here.

Thank for weighing in.

[gaylem_scott]

I am a high school math teacher trying to build my Canvas skills and knowledge. I have used another LMS platform and was resistant to "teaching an old dog new tricks" when I changed districts and platforms. I have found the quizzes platform tedious on Canvas as I can quickly type math text in Word for quizzes and tests but was not as much in Canvas. I am appreciative of the above discussion as I have learned more about Canvas capabilities in regards to quizzes and also learning I am not alone in my frustration with this feature. I look forward to any changes Cnavas might make to allow the question import from a Word test bank.

[ronmarx]

All of us weighing in to promote this idea agree with you,  @gaylem_scott ‌. It's why I have a very simple to use and manage Filemaker database of U.S. history questions that I exported as text files and imported directly into Blackboard, when I used that LMS.

(Here's a crib sheet from California PolyTech: Upload .txt Questions into a Test Tutorial .)

Regardless how Instructure engineers this for use with text files, MS Word files, csv files, etc., they understand this is the simple function all of us who use Canvas to deliver assessments are clamoring for them to add to Canvas.

[Chris_Hofer]

I'm not sure I'm understanding,  @ronmarx .  I just opened up my copy of the Respondus 4.0 Exam Authoring Tool, and there is an update (from January 24, 2019) waiting for me to install...which includes some OAuth updates for Canvas as well as some other fixes.  You can read more about it here: Respondus 4.0.8.04 Patch.  (The last update I have installed was from January 22, 2018.)

As for the software not being a time saver, my experience is that it has been a huge time saver for me.  In my role at our Technical College, we build courses for our faculty and adjuncts.  This also includes building any quizzes/tests/exams for the courses we build.  Often, the quizzes/tests/exams we get from instructors come from a textbook publisher or some other source, and they are not formatted properly to feed into Respondus 4.0.  However, even though it can be repetitive to re-format the questions in a way that Respondus 4.0 likes, I've found some shortcuts along the way that make compiling these files a bit more manageable.  For example, I will often use "Find and Replace All" or "Search and Replace All" when looking for similar text in questions.  I'd much prefer to be be building questions in a *.txt or *.rtf file rather than one-by-one inside of Canvas.  That way, I can ensure the questions all look the same (style-wise), and I'm not having to enter answer choices one-by-one inside of the Canvas interface.

Hope this helps, Ron.

[nathan_cline]

Please!!!!

[jcoehoorn]

Bulk loading questions to an account is a good idea, but I feel that Word is a fundamentally poor choice for the repository here.

[cholling]

At least in our school, it's not so much that Word is being the repository, but that faculty like to create new quizzes in the familiar environment of Word. The support staff then have to spend a lot of effort copying and pasting from those documents into the Canvas quiz environment. It would be such a time savings to be able to easily upload those quizzes into Canvas quiz banks.

[demellon]

I think the point is to allow importing from a text format, which would allow people to use whatever text editor or word processor they prefer to craft new quizzes, update existing ones, or adapt legacy sources to Canvas.  C/C++, HTML, scripting tools... they all take text input specifically to open up productivity to a larger audience.

[ejp10]

I agree with Cynthia and Nicholas. The format could be RTF or even TXT and still be editable in Word or other text editors/word processors.There are good reasons to avoid only DOCX/DOC Word files as an import file.

But some kind of easily-read text based import could help people import content from old Word based quizzes in batches instead of hand entering them one by one. Similarly, you might be able to create multiple versions by cutting/pasting and tweaking.

Probably preaching to the choir here...

[ronmarx]

I wish we, as a choir, could sing louder so that the product manager and product development team hears us and starts singing along. (Just couldn't resist the metaphorical analogy.)