In Quizzes Next, am I able to upload a document such as a PDF or WORD file as part of the question?

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tdcrow
Community Member

I am able to copy and paste text, but I don't see a place to upload a word or pdf file as part of the question.  

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Thanks for confirming here that I wasn't just overlooking a built-in "attach file" option!

I've run into this issue when trying to switch from a traditional quiz (where you can easily include a link to a PDF file) to new quizzes (where I was quite surprised to see you couldn't). I have used a timed quiz as a way to run timed take-home exams: when a student starts the quiz, they are given (e.g.) 2 hours to submit their response, and they can download the PDF of the exam (some will even print it out). When they complete their work, they upload a scan of what they did. It's certainly not truly *secure*, but it at least puts some boundaries on individual student work.

As I've tried to figure out how to fix this for the new quizzes system, I'm actually a little surprised that you've suggested putting the document on a Google Drive or some other external storage location. It seems to me that one could upload a file on Canvas, set to "Only available to students with link", and then use a link to your own Canvas site for this. Am I overlooking any subtleties that would make that less effective? (I like the idea of having the file contained with my Canvas course's access controls.)

(The one issue that I see for my own work on this is that I'm using a blueprint course, and I'll probably need to create the PDF link by hand for each course individually: otherwise, the quiz will presumably link to the blueprint course's version of the file which the students can't see. That's not optimal, but I think it's manageable.)

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