New Quizzes: Display Question Titles to Students

(10)

Edits that teachers make to the question title should reflect back to the students. Currently students see Question 1, Question 2, Question 3 - regardless of what the teacher has in his/her quiz settings. 

 

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19 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Thank you for sharing this idea,  @rislis ‌. We notice that your screenshot reflects how questions display to students in Canvas (Classic) Quizzes. In Quizzes.Next, question titles do not display, and "Question 1" is replaced by a large number to the left of the question prompt. 

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Since any future development resources will be directed to ideas prioritized for enhancements and changes to Quizzes.Next, we've modified the title of your idea slightly to reflect that.

James
Community Champion

Unless controlled by an instructor-controlled setting, students should not see the label the teacher has created. To do so without the consent of the instructor might expose which question from a publisher's bank the question is and since those are generally not difficult for savvy or determined students to obtain, it would give away the answer. If the instructor wants to label the question for the student, they can do so as part of the question.

I'm generally of a fan of having less options rather than more to keep the interface simple. Putting those together, it shouldn't be there unless there's an option and I don't want an extra option for small things like this, that means I couldn't support this idea.

However, if Canvas would return to the previous behavior of supplying the name of the question through the API when the instructor asks for it, it would be very helpful.

pete3
Community Novice

The primary point for me is once again a disconnect between what I see when interfacing with canvas as an instructor, and what is made available to the students. For example, in forming a question I frequently provide a short title, so subsequent discussions can refer to the title and not the number. I enter something like below, but the students don't see "01: Hometown", they see "Question 1".  For a terse question like this its not a huge deal, but when you get to move complicated questions it can be.  At a minimum there should be a warning that the title below is getting stripped away. I should not have to go through "Student View" do discover this type of disconnect. 

sarah-canatsey
Community Participant

Seems simple enough to add in the settings option: 

_ Show question title

_ Show only number

We just found this problem as well when creating a survey in Quiz Classic. Does non-graded survey act differently in Quizzes.Next?

Kelvin_Dean
Community Contributor

Although you can use Restrict student result view to hide the points and correct/incorrect answer indicators, the points for each question will still be shown when taking the survey, but not after submitting.

tkellman
Community Member

If a teacher creates a quiz with custom naming for questions, those custom names should reflect for the student as well. For Canvas to display a custom name for a teacher, and not for a student only leads to issues. It is reasonable for a teacher to create a quiz with a custom name for questions and for that teacher to assume that this gets displayed to the student. To have to go to a separate document to find out that the teacher view and student view are different is an issue that should not exist.

fordfar
Community Member

I get the concern of having excess options bog down the interface and user experience, but I'd argue that the benefits of this idea would be worth it. It's not uncommon for teachers to assume students can see custom question titles (and as pointed out, the main way to learn otherwise is to use the student view, which can go overlooked).

While some teachers use the title for their own purposes—not wanting students to see it—it's always nice to give them greater control. Teachers are creative, but software limitations tend to restrict that.

I received this question today from a teacher wanting to add custom titles for the students to see. Our workaround was to include her custom title in the question description, which was acceptable but doesn't address potential future confusion on this.

A checkbox (pictured below) could be a fairly easy solution to this issue:

Example-Custom Quiz Titles.jpg

This could be added to both classic and new quizzes.

 

rebecca9
Community Member

We are using Canvas to deliver Quiz content in a secure, timed way.  The questions are asked with the text (no question) format.  When in the student view, all questions show up as "spacer".  This makes it harder for students to navigate to specific questions.Questions labeled as spacer.png

JBMaurice
Community Explorer

I have the same question about New quizzes. There's no way to display the question title on the student interface. It would be great if we can do so.

GiovannaMacry
Community Member

New Quizzes has a component that allows instructors to create a Question Title.  However, it is not visible to students.  I realize that this can help instructors organize and search for questions, but this could also be helpful for students to see as a support while still preventing it from giving away an answer.  For example, the Question Title could serve as a space to identify a cognitive task or chapter of study (i.e Compare/Contrast, Argument Analysis, Chapter 2, etc.).  I also realize these can and should be placed in the instructions section of the question builder, but having these two so close together can make for confusion in question construction.

If the Question Title is not going to allow for an option to make visible to students, please move this to a less prominent location while still maintaining ease of use for instructor searches/scans of questions.  Thank you so much!

GiovannaMacry
Community Member

New Quizzes has a component that allows instructors to create a Question Title.  However, it is not visible to students.  I realize that this can help instructors organize and search for questions, but this could also be helpful for students to see as a support while still preventing it from giving away an answer.  For example, the Question Title could serve as a space to identify a cognitive task or chapter of study (i.e Compare/Contrast, Argument Analysis, Chapter 2, etc.).  I also realize these can and should be placed in the instructions section of the question builder, but having these two so close together can make for confusion in question construction.

If the Question Title is not going to allow for an option to make visible to students, please move this to a less prominent location while still maintaining ease of use for instructor searches/scans of questions.  Thank you so much!

GiovannaMacry
Community Member

Hello,

I have found a similar question and added my comment to it there as well.  Sorry, I did not find that question until after the fact, so feel free to delete this idea post if you'd like.  Thanks!

JBMaurice
Community Explorer

@GiovannaMacry I completely agree!

Ideally, there should be an option to make it visible to students. 

 

MB-HealthSci
Community Member

I would like to make a recommendation or request to allow for user-defined specific naming of quiz questions.  When I create Canvas quizzes, I often need to create very specific question naming.  Unfortunately, after exiting a chat with the Canvas help team, I was informed that while when "editing" a quiz, while Canvas allows me to name the question arbitrarily, and while that name will be maintained,  unfortunately as soon as you preview or launch the quiz, Canvas removes the customized question names and instead organizes them as " Question 1, Question 2, ... Question 'N' ".  It would be advantageous (for my application) if I could preserve my detailed question naming scheme.

JedKeenan
Community Participant

I am building 200 quizzes (4-60 questions each many being MCQs) and each faculty member has a unique design style, one is to group questions and to refer to answers in other questions. I need to show their question title or rewrite every quiz question with all the opportunity for error that this offers. A simple tick box 'show question name' is invaluable even if it is offered after I have had to reedit almost every quiz question.

CherylJohnson3
Community Member

In "old fashion" paper exams instructors always indicate section titles e.g., Listening Comprehension, Short Answer, Essay or Composition. New Quizzes do not seem to offer this option of section titles; therefore, expectations cannot be established. 

canvas_admin
Community Champion

@CherylJohnson3 The only way I've found to have something similar in New Quizzes is to have a "stimulus" question with the questions below the stimulus.  I only put 1 question in the stimulus and have the instructions/section heading there and the students can keep on scrolling through the exam questions until the next stimulus indicates a new section on the exam.

alvarso_uw
Community Member

I am new to Canvas, and ran into this problem. I renamed the questions thinking that would show up, and then the questions made no sense to the students!

I propose 2 options for Canvas:

1) Give the option to show the modified title (understanding the discussion on keeping things simple) - my preference

2) Make it *clear* from the start that changing that question title does NOT show to students.

Yes, its possible to add the 'title' in the text of the question - but Canvas should at least have a note that warns teachers that the changed name will not show up for students. I did not see any such note in the interface (maybe its hidden in documentation, but the interface is overall quite intuitive, except for this 'feature'). Otherwise its learning (how to use Canvas) by failure, and it feels pretty crappy to have to redo the work - at least that first time.

Thank you!

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
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