Does Canvas Import Quiz Question Feedback From Blackboard?

barnettda
Community Contributor
7
2258

Hi, community,

Really need your guidance!

Thanks to  @kona ​, who alerted me to this group!

I have 400 multiple choice questions in my Blackboard Introduction to Logic course, and I created a Bb export zip file for import into Canvas (which we're all using in the Fall).

Over the years feedback has been added to every answer, so there are now way over a thousand feedback sentences.

When I imported the quizzes into Canvas, the questions and answers came in, but all the feedback is missing!

Is there a way (short of using Respondus) to get the feedback for each answer into my Canvas course? I had thought it was part of the import process, and perhaps I didn't set it up correctly.

Can anyone help a poor panicky philosophy instructor?

Thanks!

Dan

7 Comments
barnettda
Community Contributor

Hi, all,

I'm replying to myself because, thanks to our intrepid Canvas admins, we found the answer.

The standard Blackboard 9 export zip files apparently does NOT contain the feedback for individual answers to questions (or, presumably, any general feedback).

The key is to export from Bb using the Common Cartridge format (I used 1.2 version of the Common Cartridge package). It's easy to import into Canvas, and, from a quick sample, all the feedback is there!

It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood!

Cheerily,

Dan

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

Hey Daniel,

It has been a few years since I actively helped faculty members with content migration but that is a good troubleshooting technique that I remember in general - if your content doesn't come across nicely the first time in whatever is the recommended default path, go back and see if there are other formatting options.  I would commonly download 3-4 times in different formats and then try uploading them all.  There is a lot of great advice along these lines here in the migration strategies group.

Welcome to Canvas!

kmeeusen
Community Champion

Hi Daniel:

Thanks for sharing this!  Many new folks using Canvas, and helping them make this transition smoothly is important to all of us in this Community.

Kudos!

KLM

amanda_taintor
Community Contributor

I have had quite a few instances where the feedback has not come through, but in reflection I wonder if this has to do with the question type.  Did all of your feedback come over in all question types?

jami_martin
Community Explorer

 @barnettda , thanks for bringing this up. Our district is moving from BB to Canvas next year and although we plan on having teachers export their BB courses at the end of the year, we hadn't thought about the different formats fully. Did you see any disadvantages to exporting/importing as the Common Cartridge Format compared to the zip file?

scottdennis
Instructure
Instructure

It has been several years since I have been involved with migrating quizzes from Blackboard to Canvas.  As a general rule I remember we used to recommend that if there are several possible paths available to migrate a given content type, to try them all and see which one gives the best result.  I remember that some of the content migrated best when exporting the entire course and some worked best when exporting/importing individual content items.  Always migrate into test courses vs courses that will have live students so that you can clean things up before copying over to a production course.  I'm not sure but I seem to remember that yes, some question types migrated better than others.

scourchesne1
Community Member

Hello,

I've run into a similar problem. Unfortunately, Dan's solution to use common cartridge 1.2 didn't work. I tried importing the quizzes (from Blackboard 9), I tried both classic quizzes as well as new quizzes. The feedback in the Blackboard quizzes is not showing up. The quizzes included both multiple choice and essay questions, but it was the essay questions that had "suggested" answers as feedback. So perhaps this solution only works for multiple choice questions?