New Quizzes: Drop-down answers should not be automatically shuffled

0 Likes
(13)

When creating a "fill in the blank" question in a New Canvas Quiz, the drop-down answer options are always  automatically shuffled for students. This is despite the fact that in quiz settings, the "shuffle answers" option is disabled. This should not be the expected behavior for New Quizzes. It would be extremely helpful for instructions using this feature if there were some kind of toggle to the New Quiz fill in the blank drop-down answer type questions to allow selection of whether the answers are shuffled or not, like there is for all other question types. 

17 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
mcolucci
Community Member

I agree. It does not make sense for these questions to shuffle possible answers by design even when the shuffle option is not selected. I often have my students parse a series of verbs in foreign languages. I do not need them to have to try to find where the correct answer is. It should be in the same place every time. This costs them time. If a shuffle switch exists, then it should toggle for all questions.

It took Canvas Help, several days to admit the questions were actually doing this, and then several more for them to notify me that this is by design. First, if it is by design, then Canvas Help should know it is by design and not tell users that it is not happening. Second, if it is by design, then is is poorly designed when there is a toggle switch and no explanation that it is ineffective on certain kinds of questions.

rbd34
Community Novice

100% agree with this.  Ordering dropdowns allows students to make sense of trends in the responses.  I desperately want this feature for my chemistry laboratory quizzes in Canvas for the fall.  Frankly, I'm a little puzzled as to how anyone thought that shuffling dropdown selections should be the default option, let alone the only option.  

ivyjl
Community Explorer

I cannot understand why this shuffling should be the default behavior at all and the fact that the shuffling cannot be turned off is infuriating.

If I have choices of things like "1st person", "2nd person", and "3rd person" it is just confusing to have them in a random order.

lee_barnett
Community Member

Adding my voice to this. The ability to NOT shuffle dropdown choices needs to be added. It should probably even be the default.

greenj
Community Explorer

We agree completely.  

janice_meyer
Community Explorer

Howdy,

I am the global admin for my account.  Speaking on behalf of the subaccount admins, we agree with the comments posted here.  This should not be the default setting.  

vallecillo
Community Novice

Adding support to the posted comments. Having "Shuffle Answers" as the default setting makes New Quizzes unusable for our purposes, mainly because we need a functional Likert Scale option for our user audience.

staggs
Community Member

Adding my support to this. Having "Shuffle Answers" as the default setting makes New Quizzes unusable for our purposes. Perhaps before making changes or creating defaults, you should seek input from your user community.  The New Quizzes is not usuable and my group is now having to seek alternatives because of this and the discontinuation of the likert scale.

COMCME
Community Novice

100% agree with this. Shuffling the answers should not be the default.

srarnold
Community Novice

Completely agree with the posted comments. Without the option to disable shuffling, New Quizzes is not functional for the purpose in which Canvas is utilized by my department,  causing us to have to explore other options. We have a prescribed set of questions for our quizzes that include Likert scale ratings. Responses in the drop down have to remain stable.

SoniaHaiduc
Community Member

I agree and cannot use New Quizzes for this reason, since I need the answers ordered in the same order I entered them. Having them automatically shuffle without being able to turn this off makes no sense at all. 

chenshall
Community Participant

@sarah_eissesCompletely agree. As we have begun importing Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes, we've found this to be a problem for us. It really doesn't make sense that drop-down options would automatically shuffle, even if the shuffle answers toggle is switched off.

We use drop-down options to test students on identifying where on a scale of options certain items should sit - but it's impossible to replicate the scale if the answers get shuffled!

mcolucci
Community Member

I teach classical languages and use fill-in-the-blank questions with the drop-down options for verb parsing questions. I prefer that the possible answers appear in the same order each time (they can in classic quizzes) so that the students do not have to find the answer they want in a different place on the list every time they move to the next question. This happens whether the quiz is set to shuffle answers or not. Adding a feature that would allow me to disable the shuffle in these types of questions would help my students develop their speed as well as limit the number of errant clicks.

RyanLidster
Community Member

Yes, precisely. This becomes extremely and needlessly burdensome on the students. If I have multiple things that are just labelled "A B C D," then it makes no sense at all for them to see "C B D A" on some of them. That is a level of complexity that I am not testing, and that is irrelevant to my educational goals.

Decisions on how to organize quizzes should be based on their psychometric properties, i.e. what do we want students to do, and what would their answers tell us about what they know. If their incorrect answers simply meant "I couldn't find the right answer in the randomly rotating dropdown menus," or "This became more of a searching problem than an understanding problem," then that is a problem with the software.  

ellisonl15
Community Participant

The same thing is going on with the matching questions in new quizzes which I have used for guided translation work (hello ancient language teachers who are also frustrated by Canvas' misleading settings!). I had been foolishly assuming the "question" part of the matching was staying the same because I did not choose anywhere to shuffle questions. Alas, since I did choose to "shuffle ANSWERS" in the quiz settings, the matching questions also shuffle. So what I thought was an effective activity for the students is actually just a bunch a nonsense for the students

It was suggested by the Canvas L1 support that I make this thing that is clearly an error in the coding a "feature request", which I'm taking as an indication that they don't intend to correct this problem. 

I'll be looking for alternatives to using quizzes in Canvas, though it's difficult at this point. My campus does have H5P integrated into Canvas, but it seems to work oddly with the gradebook, though that's probably not as a big a problem as the lack of expected functionality from the Canvas New Quiz tools. 

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.