Default Quiz Settings

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lfrancis1
Community Novice

Hi Everyone,

In the classic Quiz tool is there a way for Admins to make the "Let Students See The Correct Answers" default be turned off?

Currently the default for this is On and it has caused problems when teachers inadvertently leave it checked and students see the correct answers after taking a test. They are then able to share these with other classes who may not have taken the test yet.

In the interests of test security, would it not make more sense for this to be off by default so an instructor has to intentionally share the correct answers?

Thanks!

Lewis

1 Solution
James
Community Champion

 @lfrancis1  

There is no way to change the defaults within the core product. Wanting to change the defaults of something is a very popular request.The ability to set defaults for course settings is a currently open feature request. 

However, quizzes are at the course level where most people defer to the instructor. Along with the fact that Canvas has stopped development on Legacy Quizzes to focus on New Quizzes, it is unlikely that you will ever see movement on setting quiz defaults.

From a learning perspective, most people probably want students to be able to see what they missed on a quiz. There are some areas where this is not acceptable at all, but Canvas tries to set the defaults according to best educational practices and how most people would use it (with the best practices sometimes taking precedence).

What I do is give my students a certain amount of time to take the quiz (usually 4 days in my classes) and then they can only see the correct answers after the time is up. This gives me the best of both worlds -- it's harder for students to share the answers until the time is up and they still get to see the correct answers at some point. 

It really is on the shoulders of the course designer / instructor to make sure that the settings are done properly.This may need to be a better job of educating them to the options available and how important it is to set them properly. Setting the defaults in an effort to force them into good behavior isn't as good as them understanding the options and how they behave. If you haven't seen Kona Jones' document Quiz Settings to Maximize Security, I strongly recommend it.

When you copy a course from term to term, the quiz settings go with it. So getting it set up properly should be a one-time thing per quiz. Depending on the courses, you may also be able to implement blueprint courses, where you can set the quiz settings in one place and then push it out to individual courses. That may not work if you're a small school or each instructor does their own thing.

If you still feel that you need to change the default, you can employ custom global JavaScript that unchecks the box. You'll need to be careful with that though to make sure that it's only done once and not every time the quiz gets edited -- otherwise, you'll really frustrate your teachers because they'll have to check the box every time. You could check to see if the document.title is "Unnamed Quiz" as one way to see if it's a new quiz. As long as that's true, then you could uncheck the input#never_hide_results box.

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