New Quizzes - Creating Groups of Questions?

[PMH]

I have an exam formatted as a New Quiz. I want to be able to shuffle all but 7 of the questions. I am trying to create a group where I would put those 7 questions in a set order. I want to then attach that 7-item group to the end of the exam (after all shuffled questions). This is easy in Desire2Learn's system, but not Canvas. I have not been able to locate help online so please help.

If creating Groups (of questions that are NOT from test banks) is not possible, PLEASE add that to the Canvas system.

Thank you, PMH@CSULB

[James · Accepted solution]

Nick ( @nwilson7 ), I don't use New Quizzes, but what you're describing sounds like Classic Quizzes. I went in and played a few minutes on a New Quiz and it looks like Item Banks in New Quizzes are the closest things to Question Groups in Classic Quizzes. I would love to be completely wrong here, but it sounds like you would need to create an item bank if you want the grouped randomization feature (you can shuffle all questions without using item banks).

@PMH, Item Banks do not have to be from a publisher; you can add your own questions to an Item Bank. You could create an item bank with all but the last seven questions on it and then add the last seven questions directly as was described for Classic Quizzes.

All of that said, I feel your frustration. New Quizzes isn't ready for me, yet.

[blopes · Accepted solution]

Hi @PMH,

@James is right, unfortunately, question groups are not available in new quizzes, only on classic quizzes. 

You would need to create the questions in an item bank and add the bank to the quiz, and then add the additional 7 questions right after the item bank.

You are welcome to share an idea with our community. 

How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community? 

I hope you will have a great day.

[nwilson7]

@PMH If you want questions in a specific order, don't put them in a group and just put them in the order you want them.  Groups are used to shuffle questions or to link to an item/question bank.  So at the end of you quiz, you just have the 7 questions in the order you want.

Hope this helps!

-Nick

[James · Accepted solution]

Nick ( @nwilson7 ), I don't use New Quizzes, but what you're describing sounds like Classic Quizzes. I went in and played a few minutes on a New Quiz and it looks like Item Banks in New Quizzes are the closest things to Question Groups in Classic Quizzes. I would love to be completely wrong here, but it sounds like you would need to create an item bank if you want the grouped randomization feature (you can shuffle all questions without using item banks).

@PMH, Item Banks do not have to be from a publisher; you can add your own questions to an Item Bank. You could create an item bank with all but the last seven questions on it and then add the last seven questions directly as was described for Classic Quizzes.

All of that said, I feel your frustration. New Quizzes isn't ready for me, yet.

[blopes · Accepted solution]

Hi @PMH,

@James is right, unfortunately, question groups are not available in new quizzes, only on classic quizzes. 

You would need to create the questions in an item bank and add the bank to the quiz, and then add the additional 7 questions right after the item bank.

You are welcome to share an idea with our community. 

How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community? 

I hope you will have a great day.

[TanyaUponAvon]

Hi, 

Before I begin, please pardon the length of this message; I felt it was necessary to give details so that my requests/questions could be more accurately addressed.

I have a major exam that must be separated into groups by topic areas, and I am limited to using the New Quizzes tool. As it has been over a year since this question was posted, I am wondering if any progress has been made in creating question groups in New Quizzes. 

I have already tried to find current information on this site in several places (e.g.,  the New Quizzes Hub, Ideas & Themes, and the Instructor Guide), and kept being routed back to the same pages that actually had no information on question groups in New Quizzes (e.g., the "How do I create a quiz with a question group to randomize questions" page, which, incidentally, should be retitled to indicate that it focuses only on Classic Quizzes, so that people like me don't have to discover this after several attempts at searching through the whole thing for information that was not there. Adding a note at the top of this page (and others) to clearly call out that New Quizzes do not yet have this feature (as it appears to be) wouldn't hurt, particularly since the site routes the user who specifies "new quizzes" in the search tool to this page. 

Incidentally, the current note on the "How do I create a quiz with a question group to randomize questions" page (midway down the page), "Note: Learn more about creating a quiz using New Quizzes" just leads the user back around to the "How do I create a quiz with New Quizzes" page, which--guess what--does not address question groups in New Quizzes at all! It's very misleading. Why does the note not simply say it's not yet possible to create question groups in New Quizzes (assuming that is truly the case, as it appears to be--but there is no place I can find on this site that directly answers this question). Why does Canvas/Instructure send the user on a circituous goose chase rather than directly addressing the point anywhere? At least, not anywhere in the logical locations for such information (perhaps this information is buried somewhere I couldn't find it).

In fact, I find the information provided throughout the site about this absent feature to be very misleading. For example, the "FAQ: New Quizzes" page addresses question groups (under the topic, "What are Question Banks vs Question Groups? How do they appear when migrated to a New Quiz?") only to say what Classic Quizzes question banks are (again, this is a FAQ on New Quizzes) and that they can be migrated to New Quizzes as Item Banks. This is not helpful or relevant to the question, as I see no way to make Item Banks appear within separate groups in New Quizzes. I may be wrong, but it appears to be that Canvas/Instructure still has no way to group questions within a new quiz (in my case, a major exam).

Also, I found a reference to a "New Quizzes Feature Comparison" page, but such a page appears to have disappeared. The link goes to the "New Quizzes Transition Toolkit" page, which does not mention a feature comparison. A page like that could have very simply and quickly addressed my question.

I think the community members would be better served by an honest, direct handling of this information, so that we don't waste our time on a runaround like I have, only to find that question groups are just not possible in New Quizzes yet. (Or, if I am mistaken, and it is actually possible, this information needs to be provided in an accessible and logical location!) I, for one, would be far more understanding about the current lack of a question grouping option in New Quizzes if this were directly addressed, and I hadn't had to waste an hour digging through misleading links to misleading pages on the site. 

It seems unlikely to me that no one in the community has yet created an Idea/Theme for this topic, so I am hoping there is some initiative out there to address this issue that I am simply unable to locate in the Ideas and Themes. I am also frustrated with the Ideas and Themes navigation and search options, particularly the lack of ability to filtering futher by topic to narrow the results ("new quizzes" generates over a thousand results, while "new quizzes question groups" offers no results). 

Finally, I would like to ask why this question/topic has been labeled as "Solved", when there is evidently no solution provided. The answer from @sslopez above states this, "You would need to create the questions in an item bank and add the bank to the quiz, and then add the additional 7 questions right after the item bank." I don't understand how this addresses the question of how to create groups in the quiz. I tried using this method and found that the Item Bank questions (I tired adding some from two different Item Banks) were simply mixed in with the other questions.

IF there is actually a way to group questions on New Quizzes through Item Banks, complete instructions should be provided on the site, rather than an offhand sentence with incomplete information buried in a question string such as this. In fact, if there is actually a way to create question groups, I would be very happy to hear it. 

TL; DR: Is there any way yet to present questions in a new quiz within groups? If not, is there any current initiative to do so? (And a space within the quiz to make headings for the groups would be nice too.)

Also: Can you please change the pages identified above to more accurately and directly address the status of question groups in New Quizzes?

Thank you,

Tanya

[TanyaUponAvon]

Note: I just realized that the topic was labeled as "solved" by the question-asker, not the Canvas representatives/coaches, so please pardon me for whinging about that point (why is this topic labeled as "solved") in my message above. All other whinging is still whinged.

Thanks,

Tanya

[TanyaUponAvon · Accepted solution]

Me again (having a lovely conversation with myself). I think I have figured out a solution to this issue of not being able to group questions in New Quizzes. This is what I would call a "workaround", but I tested it, and it does work.

You can use the Stimulus Question format to group a set of questions together.

1. Use the stimulus text box to write in your header for the group (e.g., just type in "Part 1, etc.).
2. Set the "stimulus" to appear above the associated questions.
3. Create your set of questions for the group within that stimulus set. (It may feel a bit awkward to create them in the smaller space allowed, but it won't appear that way to students.)
4. Repeat for each question group.

Pretty simple, actually. This solution may already be a known thing (I can't be the first person to figure this out), but I couldn't find anything about it on the site, so I'm posting it here in case it might help someone else who comes across this string.

Thanks!

[tyson_brown]

Whoa!  Your workaround MAY have just answered a question I JUST got from a faculty member!  I'll be trying this out right away!  Thanks for the (ha ha) stimulus!