Recommendation for New Quizzes vs Classic Quizzes (or both) training for faculty at the university transitioning into Canvas Fall 24

[MonikaMajor]

Hi, 

I am preparing Canvas workshops at a small university transitioning from Sakai into Canvas this Fall.  Should I train the faculty to use both Classic and New Quizzes at this time (April 24th)?  Are there any advantages of using Classic quizzes for instructors who are new to Canvas?

I am the only instructional designer at my institution and I would appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Thank you,

Monika

[amyslack]

Hello @MonikaMajor - 

So we migrated from Moodle to Canvas back in January of 2021 and I had to make a similar decision. 

With my timeline New Quizzes was still very much under development and thankfully within a semester or two we started to see dramatic improvements in New Quizzes but at the time we thought Classic quizzes was going away in the next year or so - that timeline was clearly changed. But I didn't want to migrate us from one platform (Examsoft/Moodle) to another (Classic) and then do it all over again in a year/18 months (New Quizzes) if I could avoid it. 

At the time with the information we had, we made the decision to go as all in on New Quizzes as we could and focused heavily on teaching New Quizzes and only teaching Classic Quizzes as needed for those that had feature needs that were only possible in Classic. My world is a bit different since I have a variety of healthcare programs and we were able to target specific programs and only teach New Quizzes to those programs who that would fit their need and Classic to those that needed some of those classic features - the main one being the ability to download a csv of the data. 

In time we have fully pushed all our people over towards New Quizzes and since it has had the improvements it has, I know that if I was making this decision today, I would ONLY be teaching New Quizzes - having to support both was a headache I would love to go back in time to prevent. Even for allowing small pockets to use it - I wish I had pushed harder to get them into New Quizzes from the start. 

At this point most of the features needed are now in New Quizzes - while there are still quirks and frustrations at times (images.... just images... why are they always breaking) it still is less of one then trying to teach both. Some of the big issues have been solved - like the delayed reporting - this was the one my people were most often most annoyed by and were very vocal about. And the benefits are better - New Quizzes has more modern question types, reporting is more on demand now, moderation works more smoothly and remembers the whole course, item banks and outcomes are awesome once you figure those out, etc. Also, from just a UI standpoint teaching New Quizzes is smoother - its user friendly and auto saves. I can't tell you how many people were mad at Canvas when first learning in back when Classic was the only (or main) option, and they would forget to save and lose their work - this was ALWAYS a big hurdle especially as more people are using more tools that do autosave. Plus, question banks and groups in Classic was also a huge pain to teach just so the questions could be randomized - this is one click in New Quizzes. There are other features built into New Quizzes that were not even dreamed of in Classic - build upon last attempt, the cooling off period between attempts, and even just how you set extra attempts are all easier to manage (or just possible) within New - even the options on what students can and cannot see in New Quizzes are better than what Classic offered ( thought I do want them to make it so we can select only certain students to see feedback or set a specific window - but there are work arounds that suffice) 

So based on all of that and my experience of teaching many people many different technology platforms over the years - I would focus on the future and at least heavily focus on New Quizzes 🙂 Hope this helps!

[MonikaMajor]

Thank you for your thoughtful response!  I am leaning toward New Quizzes.  I know the pains of saving a quiz both on a question level and again at the end.  The faculty is already unhappy so another transition would not hard to stomach.

I appreciate your advice!

[snugent]

Hi @MonikaMajor 

This is tough call. Normally, I would say just train for new but with new quizzes is more complicated than that. The biggest hurdle for us is that publisher resources and Respondus (desktop software for creating quizzes) can't be imported directly with new quizzes as of yet. I would anticipate that this will be an issue for you as well so you can't dismiss classic quizzes just yet. Thankfully, it is easy to migrate quiz content to new quizzes.

I really don't have any good advice for you but I can share what we have done so far with our instance and training. We've been with Canvas over 10 years so our people are very familiar with classic quizzes. New quizzes has had many transitions that were pushed back since its introduction so I decided to not do much it as far as training until about 2021. We enforced new quizzes in the interface at that time so instructors can choose which quiz tool to use. At that time I only had about 10 people using new quizzes. I believe we have more using it now but its still not many. We have done some training but I didn't ramp up training until the bulk migration tool was available. In the training I emphasize they can choose to move to new quizzes when they are ready and that we have no plans to enforce new quizzes as the only quiz tool until publisher resources and Respondus is supported. 

[DavidSchlater]

@snugent  You can use Admin Analytics to see how many courses this term are using New Quizzes. I'd be interested if it is growing or shrinking...

[snugent]

@DavidSchlater I looked at it yesterday. I'm assuming new quizzes is counted under external tools and it is a very small percentage. I'm not pushing too hard on new quizzes and probably won't until we absolutely have to because we already had too many false starts with new quizzes. 

[MonikaMajor]

Thank you for your thoughtful response!  Excuse my ignorance because I have just transitioned to instruction design from teaching.  Do your problems with Respondus include the lock down browser?  Some faculty expressed interest in learning about a lock down browser.  Is Respondus the only option?  Could you explain what kind of publisher resources can be integrated with Canvas Quizzes?  I have taught with Canvas for 5 years but never used any publisher resources.

I am very grateful for your help!

Monika

[snugent]

@MonikaMajor 

We have a license for "Respondus" which I call the exam creator and Respondus Lockdown. It is confusing! I wish the exam creator software had a unique name like Lockdown Browser does. The exam creator software is a desktop app that can be used to create quizzes. It can also import questions from a Word document and publish quizzes directly to Canvas classic quizzes. Here is my documentation on the software. If you don't have a license for it then this may not be an issue for you. I was just anticipating that you may have license for it and you would be the same situation as we have with it and new quizzes. 

https://lakeland.instructure.com/courses/1455362/pages/respondus-exam-creator-documentation?module_i... 

On publisher resources, for example when a book is adopted, the publisher may offer software where instructors can build quizzes using a provided test bank and then export the quiz as a QTI file that can be imported to classic quizzes in Canvas.  Sometimes the publisher will also offer a QTI file that you import directly to Canvas classic quizzes. Here is my documentation on this. The video is old but still applies to classic quizzes. 

https://lakeland.instructure.com/courses/1455362/pages/importing-quiz-questions-into-canvas 

What you might to do is only train on new quizzes but leave classic quizzes open to using in case you every need to import files from a publisher. I think that is what I would do if I were in your position. It is so hard to train people on two totally different tools that behave so differently especially with regards to question/item banks. I hope this helps. 

[MonikaMajor]

Thank you so much for your explanation!  We do not have a license for Respondus as of now but the faculty is asking for locked down browser option.  Is Respondus the only option or should we consider something else?

I really appreciate your help!

[snugent]

Hi @MonikaMajor 

I can't really speak to the other products since we've only used Lockdown Browser. During the pandemic we used Lockdown Browser with their Monitor product. You do get 200 free seats for Monitor with Lockdown license. Monitor is the web cam portion of Lockdown Browser. it is very easy to setup Lockdown quizzes in Canvas. You will definitely need to get your tech people involved to make sure lockdown is available on campus computers (where you need it) and on any rental computers students can check out. Students can also install the software on personal computers. We removed the monitor license after everyone came back to campus. Not many people were using it and it was a pain to support. Most of the Lockdown issues involve the webcam. You can review the documentation I've created. 

Instructors 

https://lakeland.instructure.com/courses/1455362/pages/instructor-information-for-lock-down-browser?...

Students

https://lakeland.instructure.com/courses/1455362/pages/lockdown-browser-and-monitor-for-students 

[MonikaMajor]

Thanks!  The faculty is opposed to software that records students.  I assume you can use respondus without the Monitor service?

Thank you!

[pjonas1]

Yes, faculty control if Monitor is used or Lockdown as a standalone solution at the individual quiz level. There is also a hybrid option which I use: Monitor when students use their own devices but a password for the testing center that turns Monitor off. It’s a nice compromise for students that don’t want to be recorded. 

Warning: Lockdown Browser is somewhat broken with New Quizzes. All settings are lost on course copy and have to be remade for every quiz in every course. Sounds harmless, but it’s easily 1,000 clicks per semester for me.

Also, faculty have the option to let students print quizzes in Lockdown Browser (helpful for certain approaches to tutoring). This too is broken with New Quizzes.

Instructure has indicated that they are not interested in fixing these issues. If Respondus Lockdown Browser is of interest, I would recommend either sticking to Classic Quizzes or putting office support behind faculty to redo the settings for every course every semester. 

[MonikaMajor]

Thank you!  There is some interest in lockdown browser but we do not have a license so I think I will ask those who want to use it use Classic Quizzes but train everyone on New Quizzes,

[BritLewis]

Agreed! All of the names for Respondus' products can be confusing. If it's helpful, the exam creator you are referring to is specifically named Respondus 4. Hope this helps a bit!

[leward]

Hi @MonikaMajor ,

At Indiana University, we have a comparatively small number of faculty using new quizzes.  For faculty considering New Quizzes, we want them to do so with their eyes fully open.  The pros and cons are laid out in our KB doc: https://kb.iu.edu/d/arkc.   I encourage you to take a close look at this Google document, New Quizzes: Missing Features and Known Issues, which is a resource linked from the Missing features and known issues in New Quizzes section of the KB doc.  Here are the issues that I regard as major impediments to adoption (there are lots of minot annoyances as well)

• Inability to control when grades and feedback become available to students by setting a date or selecting an event (e.g., after final attempt)
• Grades and feedback (if enabled in the Quiz Settings) are available to students immediately, regardless of the grade posting policy and status of the associated gradebook item.  [this, like many of the tools shortcomings, is a byproduct of the fact that New Quizzes is an LTI tool, and therefore behaves differently than native Canvas tools)
• Bug:  In item bank questions, embedded media and links to content stored in the course Files tool are only visible to students in the course in which the question was created. Students in other courses will not be able to view or access these materials.  (see community thread Pictures in new quizzes not showing up and IU's documentation About the Bug in New Quizzes Item Banks). Personally, I find the fact that Instructure has not deployed a stopgap fix while they sort our their longer-term architecture goals for file storage as very concerning.  
• No support for creating graded and ungraded surveys.  There are lots of alternatives for ungraded surveys, but not for surveys that award points for completion.
• Lack of robust reporting, including inability to view or download a complete record of all student attempts with answers to each question. 

[MonikaMajor]

Thank you so much!  This is really helpful!  Your comparison spreadsheet gives much more information than the documentation provided by Instructure!

My faculty is already annoyed about leaving Sakai and they do not seem to like LMS in general, so tentatively I am thinking to start them with New Quizzes. I find the process of creating questions easier in New Quizzes even though I used Classic Quizzes as an instructor.  With Classic I would get irritated when I lost work because I did not save on the question level and on the global level.  But I used to wait until everyone completed the quiz before releasing the answers, which I learned from you is not possible with New Quizzes.  

Perhaps I should be thinking which version is more like Sakai.  I have no experience with Sakai and our Saki admin quit recently!

I appreciate your help!

[DavidNez]

I use quizzes to check student pulse in knowledge acquisition.