New Quizzes, New Opportunities, and New Questions

[mjennings]

New Quizzes is coming! New Quizzes is coming! 

This is the refrain I find myself saying to the faculty. But this time it is more real. It feel like a certainty. I am excited, nervous, hopeful and a little stressed. But as with any new technology tool rollout, you have got to roll with the punches. 

Background

I am a sub-account administrator for the UAB School of Nursing that supports approximately 300 faculty & adjuncts with around 175 Canvas courses of over 400 sections each semester. We have small classes with 3-7 students and some courses that have over 400 students. I have two Instructional Designers and a Video Specialist on my team. We started pilot testing New Quizzes over the summer semester and are expanding the number of courses using New Quizzes this semester to any course that wants to dip their toe in the water. I have conducted 3 training sessions so far, am about to head to the 4th later this morning, and just scheduled another five sessions by the Thanksgiving Break.

New Opportunities

Personally, I am excited about New Quizzes and can see a lot of potential for the future. I have been waiting for some of the features that are available since 2014 when we moved to Canvas. The ability to accommodate disability students one time for the entire semester, the new printing options, new question types (hot spot, ordering, stimulus), question tagging, and many other new features are very exciting. I am also very eager for the main Canvas RCE to be implemented so that there will be a greater ability to embed and format content that will make for a richer experience.

New Questions

With new technologies and changes in workflow there are always questions. Most of the question I have are around migration and transitioning from Classic Quizzes. While I trust that the fine folks at Canvas are working hard to solve the difficult questions and have the best intentions, I understand that there is no solution that will make every user happy. I am okay with that. I do hope that that plans will allow for as much leniency and timing as possible and the ability for institutions to work with the process to ease the transition at a local level.  For example, the current timeline has Prevent Classic Quiz Creation around 7/2022. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of our Summer semester (our programs run all year long). This means that, practically, we have to have our faculty on New Quizzes by the start of Summer semester in early May or make sure that faculty have ALL of their quizzes and exams created before that 7/2022 date. From experience, I can tell you that the latter option won't happen. That is just a reality. So I find my self in the position that is having to push out this tool before official transition. I am confident that Canvas will figure it out, but it does make it harder to get my faculty to buy into, "New Quizzes analytics takes 24 hours to display and there is no way to download them, yet" when they have that functionality now and are very dependent on it.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am very hopeful for this product. Is it perfect now? No. Will it ever be perfect? Probably not, what tool is? Will it constantly improve over time? I believe that Canvas' track record says, Yes. 

I have plenty of other thoughts that I just can't wrangle right now, I have to go train faculty on New Quizzes. 

Stay well and be awesome!