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.

Tip! Create your quiz in your sandbox first

You can create a quiz in your sandbox and copy it to a real course or examination room. That way you can test your quiz without risking students seeing it, and you can also reuse the quiz for the following years. However, feel free to test your quiz to ensure it works before and after you copy it.

The steps to creating a quiz

Choose quiz tool.
Create an empty quiz.
Choose desired settings.
Create questions.

1. Choose quiz tool

KTH provides three different quiz tool through Canvas:

New Quizzes.
Möbius.
Classic Quizzes.

The difference between these is explained on the page Quiz tools in Canvas .

2. Create an empty quiz

If you want to create an empty quiz with one of Canvas’ built in quiz tools (New Quizzes or Classic Quizzes) you do it the following way:

Press "Quizzes” in the course menu.
Press the button "+Quiz" to create a new quiz.
In the box that opens, mark which quiz tool you want to use, New Quizzes or Classic Quizzes. If you want to you can also check the checkbox “Remember my choice for this course”, that way you will skip the choice next time you create a quiz.
Press “Submit”.

You will now end up in the assignment settings for a quiz. Under the next heading these settings are explained, as well as the specific settings for quizzes.

If you want to use Möbius you must first create the quiz as a Möbius “assignment” and then link it to Canvas. KTH’s IT support has to do the linking the first time, but after that you can do it on your own. To get help with the linking to Möbius, contact it-support@kth.se .

3. Choose desired settings

Canvas has two different types of settings for all quizzes. The assignment settings are the settings that are also available for regular assignments, and the quiz or build settings are the settings that are only available for quizzes.

Assignment settings

Quizzes have fewer assignment settings than regular assignments. The ones you need to think about are the following:

Give the quiz a name.
(Optional) Write a description of the quiz. This is often appreciated by the students. For New Quizzes you add the description when you create the questions.
Assign points (except for Classic Quizzes). These are the points that is used in Canvas for, for example, weighting and letter grades. It is recommended to set these points to the same value as the sum of points per question.
Assign the quiz. Specify which students will take the quiz and the date settings. You can read more about this on the page Availability period and due date .

Quizzes are added to the students’ To-do list according to their due dates, in the same way as assignments.

Quiz or build settings

These settings change the way the quiz behaves for the students, and it is optional to use them. The different settings are suitable in various situations depending on how you intend to use them and the type of questions you want to ask the students.

You can find the settings in different places for all quiz tools:

For Classic Quizzes these are located together with the assignment settings.
For Möbius, read the guide Define assignment properties (digitaled.com) .
For New Quizzes you can reach these settings by pressing the “Build” button and choosing the “Settings” tab in the build mode.

If you want to use a quiz for examination, you can read about which settings we recommend on the page Settings for examining quiz .

Settings to choose between

Both Classic and New Quizzes have similar settings to choose between, but New Quizzes have a few more. In New Quizzes you can choose the following settings:

Shuffle questions.
Shuffle answers.
One question at a time.
Require student access code.
Time limit.
Filter IP adresses.
Allow calculator.
Allow clearing selection (Multiple Choice).
Allow multiple attempts.
Restrict student result view.

You can find more detailed guides to all settings at Canvas Community:

When should I allow multiple attempts?

How many attempts a student should get in a quiz depends on the circumstances around the quiz and the purpose of the quiz.

One attempt: Examining quizzes in the same form as an exam. Also suitable for non-examining quizzes if the majority of questions are True/False questions.
Two or more attempts: When the students are going to practice the material or learn how a quiz works as a format. A reasonable and limited number of attempts signals that the student should take each attempt seriously, as if it were an examining quiz. Can be an advantage to use together with randomized questions or values.
Unlimited attempts: If you want to give the students the opportunity to practice on learning material without the pressure to perform. Feel free to add a mandatory waiting period between the attempts so the students have time to think about how they can become better for the next time. Can be an advantage to use together with randomized questions or values.

4. Create questions

The last step in creating a quiz is to fill it with questions. In both New and Classic Quizzes you have a large number of question types to choose between that will change how the students answer the questions. In Möbius you are free to build your own question types.

Do the following to create a question:

New Quizzes: In the “Build” tab, press the plus sign (named “Add content”).
Classic Quizzes: Go to the “Questions” tab and press “New question”.
Möbius: Follow the guide Work with the question editor (digitaled.com) .

For a walkthrough of different question types:

You can also randomize questions from an item bank in Canvas, read more about it on the page Add or randomize questions from a New Quiz item bank .

No matter the quiz tool, it is important to design questions and possible answer options that are reasonable according to the students. Also think about aspects like clarity of language, the level of questions, and what form of response is suitable, for example. Read more about how you can formulate questions and answer options .

Contact and support for Canvas

Do you have questions or do you want guidance?

For general support: it-support@kth.se

For educational support: e-learning@kth.se

More support from E-learning

Contacts to education support at KTH