Quizzes in Canvas are assignments that can be used to challenge student understanding and assess comprehension of course material. The quiz tool is used to create and administer online quizzes and surveys. Quizzes can also be used to conduct and moderate exams and assessments, both graded and ungraded.

Canvas has four different types of quizzes:

• A graded quiz is the most common quiz and rewards students points based on their quiz responses.
• A practice quiz is a learning tool to see how well users understand course material without providing a grade.
• A graded survey rewards students with points for completing a survey but grading is not based on right or wrong answers.
• An ungraded survey obtains opinions or other information without providing a grade.

Note:

Canvas is moving towards sunsetting Classic Quizzes next year and transition to New Quizzes. Learn more about New Quizzes and their features and take a look at the Canvas New Quizzes Feature Comparison chart.

When creating Quizzes, consider the following:

Student Accommodations

You can add accommodations for a student in New Quizzes. Accommodation settings include adding or removing time for all assessment attempts, and multiplying time limits by a set multiplier.

Accommodations apply to all assessments in a course for a student and only one accommodation can be set per student. Set accommodations can be viewed in the Accommodations column and in the Moderate panel.   

Learn more about setting up Accommodations in New Quizzes!

Best Practices

• Create test banks to organize your questions and allow for future flexibility in the question make up in the exam.  
• Enable features in Canvas Quizzes that can help create a well functioning assessment experience that encourages honesty (See more on this below):
  
  • Randomize the questions in your exam from question banks (Canvas Guide)
    
  • Setting time limits & attempt limits 
  • Controlling when and for how long the exam is open 
  • Controlling when and for how long the answers are made available to students 
  • Ability to show one question per page 
  • Ability to lock questions after answering 
  • Ability to shuffle answers (feature does not work well if you have questions with "all the above" type answers, so we suggest using the Multiple Answers question type) 
• Utilize different questions type options 
  • Multiple Choice 
  • True/False 
  • Fill-in-the-Blank 
  • Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks 
  • Multiple Answers 
  • Multiple Drop-down (can be used for Likert scale type questions, though they are sort of a pain in the neck to build!) 
  • Matching 
  • Numerical Answer 
  • Formula (simple formula and single variable) 
  • Essay 
  • File Upload 
• With approval, COE can help accommodate students with academic needs to have extra time and/or extra attempts on a quiz/exam. In the Classic Quizzes, what NPU currently uses by default, this needs to be done for each individual quiz. If you choose to use New Quizzes, you can turn on a student accommodation for all the quizzes in your course.
  

Encouraging Student Honesty

It can be somewhat challenging to eliminate cheating completely, but like the conventional classroom setting, students may cheat in the online classroom just as they would in a face-to face class.  Here are some suggestions that you may consider using in your online or hybrid course.

Respondus Lockdown Browser

In some cases, using Respondus Lockdown Browser may be an appropriate feature to enable for your exam or test. Please read more about considerations for this feature on the Respondus Lockdown Browser page and the Inclusive Use of Proctoring Technology page.

You will want to be sure your students have access to instructions for using Respondus if you choose to implement this feature.

Using multiple methods of assessment

Multiple types of assessments enable you to become familiar with an individual students’ work and discourage “proxy cheating” (someone other than the learner completing and submitting the work). In other words, it would be much easier for a student to convince someone to take a course that consists only of multiple choice tests than it would be to convince someone to take a course that consists of multiple choice tests, discussion forums, written assignments, and a final project.

Using timed quizzes

Canvas has the ability to assign a set time for students to complete quizzes.  From your experience, you can set a time in which your students are required to complete a quiz, doing so would force them to focus on completing the quiz without much time to cheat from textbooks or other sources.

Placing each test question on a separate page

Canvas quiz tool also has the ability to place each question on a separate page, doing so can make it more difficult for students to make a “copy” of the test, either by copying and pasting the questions, printing the screen, or taking a picture of the screen. Instead of being able to copy several questions at a time, students would have to copy each question one at a time. This strategy is most effective when combined with the strategy of setting a time limit on the tests.

Shuffling quiz items

Canvas also has the capability to shuffle test items, so in the event students are required to retake a quiz, the questions will not appear in the order they appeared in the previous test.

The Canvas Guides offer a robust set of tutorials for Quizzes. Take time to review these guides and let COE know if you need any additional assistance.

Note: If you plan on administering quizzes in your online course, please consider making them low stake. An online quiz is useful for checking that students are reading, understanding and retaining course material that is being presented throughout the course. Please also note that you are not limited to using True/False and Multiple-Choice questions, Canvas offers the option for you to use fill in the blanks, multiple answer questions, multiple drop-down questions, and essay quiz questions to name a few.