Printable / PDF-exportable quizzes

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas
The Quiz Build page provides quiz printing options. For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2021-08-21).

 
As an instructor, I want to be able to export a Canvas quiz as a PDF. This would enable me to easily print quizzes for the purpose of accommodation, for allowing a given student to take a quiz outside the timeframe established for the quiz for all other students, etc.

 

transferred from the old Community

Originally posted by: Pacific Union College admins

Special thanks for contributions from: Betsy Walker, John Louviere

 

 

Community Team Note: This idea remains open for voting. A virtually identical idea was moved forward for consideration in March: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/7285-exporting-quizzes-into-word-or-pdf-documents  Contrary to our customary practice, we are allowing both ideas to continue to move forward. Votes and feedback from both ideas will be evaluated.

341 Comments
ejackson
Community Champion

I agree, I can't see the average instructor being able to easily figure out the QTI method. I work with Respondus and quizes/question banks daily, and have for years, and *still* had a heck of a time figuring it out at first!  Also, instructors don't have a lot of extra time to figure the process out; I mean, they have these little things called "teaching" and "grading" and such to do. 🙂  This is why our office tries to help them out as much as possible. Some instructors who do their own quizzes/question banks have not noticed that images did not come through, and it's not discovered until students start contacting the Student Help Desk that images are missing that we are made aware of the problem, and at that point it's too late because students have already taken the test.

When I was having my long, drawn-out, sometimes 'heated' conversations with Canvas Support and Respondus Support, here is something Respondus sent me:

We suspect you have encountered the new issue that has appeared recently in Instructure Canvas. The images are published with the questions but Canvas now treats the standard "img" and "object/embed" HTML code used by Respondus to link the image as "invalid code".

In our investigation on our own Canvas test server, we can locate the images files in the Course Files. However, the underlying HTML code in the question while valid, is not being processed correctly by the Canvas system. It is a Canvas server issue that cannot be addressed through a workaround fix in Respondus 4.0.

Respondus Senior Technical Support has reported this issue to Instructure Support but we have not received an update as to when the issue will be fixed. We suggest submitting a ticket to Instructure Support as issues from customers often have higher priority than from vendors.

Meanwhile the best suggestion we can provide is for the instructor to re-insert the images using the Canvas quiz question editor inside the course. You can locate the already uploaded images in the Canvas Course Files space for re-adding to the question.

You can also upload the original images stored in the Respondus Projects folder->{Respondus file name} folder. (Unlike Word, which embeds images in a single file, Respondus uses linking to image files to meet the requirements of the LMS with HTML-based web pages.)

A smoother process definitely is needed!

asivia
Community Novice

I agree with the others...Respondus 4.0 worked beautifully with our old LMS but it's SO clunky with Canvas.  We have spoken to our Respondus rep a few times and the ball seems to be in Canvas' court.  Any ideas of making the Canvas/Respondus 4.0 integration more seamless like other LMSs? ( @amcase 

ejackson
Community Champion

That is the feeling I got as well - - my Respondus Support Rep told me they had reached out to Canvas many times and were waiting for them to do what needs done before things can move forward.

sharris
Community Participant

Deactivated user​, the feature I was talking about is being able to pull a quiz into Respondus from Respondus. In our prevoius LMS, we could go into Respondus - choose to connect to the LMS - and actually pull quizzes down. This streamlined the process & cut out the whole export/import process.

ejackson
Community Champion

In our previous LMS (Angel) Respondus had a "Retrieve" feature where I could pull quiz questions from Angel into Respondus. Respondus doesn't have that for Canvas, and I really, really miss that feature. 😞

allison
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hello Friends,

I have been chatting with our engineers about the different ways we could accommodate this request. We have a potential solution in mind, which would be based on a simple print-out from the browser, but with improved formatting. The following limitations would apply, however:

a) the print-out would NOT include all questions in a question bank, just a random sampling as if you were a single individual taking the quiz

b) basic formatting errors would be corrected, including page breaks in questions, re-formatting of drop down menus, improved answer formatting, etc., so that students could write on the quiz

c) the answer key would be available via a separate print-out

Would the solution described above deliver enough benefit for you while we chart a course to do more extensive work on quizzes at a later date? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Allison

awilliams
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Deactivated user​ I can't speak for everyone but that would make me a happy camper!

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curtain
Community Participant

I would say that 'YES!' this address quite a few of the needs so I would consider it a great start.

Thanks for the update as well as the opportunity to comment

kbeimfohr
Community Participant

This would be a HUGE step in the right direction.  Right now we have some teachers who can't use the quiz feature in Canvas because they have students who have an IEP requiring a written form of the test to be offered.  Thank you for working towards a viable solution to this issue.

kona
Community Champion

YES! This is a big step in the right direction and our faculty would be very happy to have this functionality!