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The Quiz function in Canvas

To create a well made quiz can be a difficult task. Here you will get help with choosing the right quiz tool (New Quizzes, Möbius or Classic Quizzes) and setting up useful settings for your particular quiz. You will find which question types you can choose from, how to create a quiz question, manage item banks, moderate the quiz and vary student assignments with random questions. You can also read about how guessing affects where you set the passing grade in a quiz with multiple answer options.

When are quizzes suitable educational tools?

Quizzes are usually used in examinations, but are also suitable as a pedagogical tool in the following situations:

  • As part of a course to encourage students to study continuously.
  • As an optional course element where the student is given the opportunity to practice questions created by the teacher.
  • During or after a lecture to see what the students have learned.
  • Before a lecture to find out the students' prior knowledge.

It takes time to create a quiz

It often takes a surprising amount of time to formulate questions that promote the student's learning and test the intended knowledge. It is therefore advantageous if you collaborate and share your questions with colleagues, but above all that you reuse already tested and improved material. Feel free to share quizzes with each other via Canvas Commons or through the question banks and use Canvas Commons to find other universities' quizzes.

Confidentiality and quizzes

It is possible to invoke confidentiality for examinations that are part of a question bank. The digital exam becomes a public document as soon as the exam is taken, but can be covered by confidentiality if it is standardized. There is support for this in the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (Offentlighets- och sekretesslagen, OSL), ch. 17, § 4 (rough translation): ”Secrecy applies to information that is part of or forms the basis for a knowledge test or psychological test under the supervision of an authority, if it can be assumed that the purpose of the test is counteracted if the information is disclosed”

As long as the same exam documents are used, it is possible to invoke confidentiality for the information in these.

The following are not covered by the possibility of invoking confidentiality:

  • Database questions that are unique to an examination opportunity, i.e. not standardized.
  • Database questions that are not included in the examination, and thus not the basis for the student's grade.

Quiz tools in Canvas

KTH provides three different quiz tools, all of which can be used in Canvas. New Quizzes and Classic Quizzes are already built-in into Canvas, while Möbius is an external tool that can be linked to directly from Canvas (an LTI). Here you will find information about the tools and when you should use them.

Quiz tools in Canvas

Restore course content

When changes in course content go wrong, courses accidentally gets reset or course materials are deleted, there are ways to restore and undo changes in Canvas. You can do a lot yourself, but more complicated recoveries require the involvement of IT support.

Restore and recover course content in Canvas

Creating a quiz

This guide helps you create a quiz in Canvas in all three quiz engines, Classic Quizzes, New Quizzes, and Möbius. Learn how to create an empty quiz, choose desired settings, and fill the quiz with questions.

Creating a quiz

New Quizzes question types

New Quizzes have several different kinds of questions and ways of collecting answers. Here you can find a summary of all question types and links to subpages with detailed descriptions and recommendations. You, as an employee of KTH, can also try out all the question types in an example quiz.

Question types New Quizzes

Built-in calculator

In Canvas New Quizzes you can activate a built-in calculator when the quiz is created. This means that the students can stay in the quiz when they are doing calculation questions. The calculator is available in two variants: Basic and Scientific.

Calculator in Canvas New Quiz

Item banks and randomized questions

Learn to use New Quizzes item banks to share quiz questions with other teachers and courses, and to randomize questions in a quiz. You can also learn how to randomize assignments for examination by using item banks.

Quiz settings for examination

Quizzes in Canvas can be customized to suit your examination format with several settings. You can, for example, limit which students can open the quiz with IP addresses or access codes. You can also set a time limit and control when and how the students’ results are shown to them. Here, we go through the relevant settings for examining quizzes.

Settings for examining quiz

How guessing affects the passing grade

The risk with quiz questions with given answer options is that the students can guess the correct answer to the questions. In order to measure students' actual level of knowledge, you need to take guessing into account when deciding the passing grade. Here we use a scientific article by Brett P. Foley to calculate this risk and give suggestions on how to manage it.

How guessing affects the passing grade

Moderate New Quizzes in Canvas

Sometimes students need accommodations for extra time, more attempts or to reopen an already submitted quiz. Here are instructions on how to do that in New Quizzes.

Moderate New Quizzes in Canvas

Video in quizzes in Canvas

Do you want to attach a quiz to a video? On these pages, we present different ways and set-ups on how you can use video in a quiz in Canvas New Quizzes. Videos can be used in a few different ways depending on the purpose of the quiz, how the questions are to be presented and what you want the students to do in the quiz. Here you will find information about introductory videos, quizzes enhanced with videos and how to insert activating questions to an already recorded course video.

Video in quizzes in Canvas

Classic Quizzes

Classic Quizzes is Canvas’ first quiz feature that is currently being replaced by New Quizzes. If you use Classic Quiz today, it’s time to migrate your quizzes to the new quiz feature, “New Quizzes”. At the moment, however, this is the better choice if you need to export CSV-files for student response analysis or if you are using an API.

Classic Quizzes