Canvas Quizzes

There is a common assumption that digital tests or quizzes can only be used for multiple-choice questions, and that these are only suitable for testing students’ knowledge or recall of facts.

In addition to testing knowledge, quiz questions can be used to assess:

• application of knowledge
• applying principles
• skills
• students’ opinions or attitudes

The next section includes some examples of the types of assessment that can be created with the different quiz question types.  

Vanderbilt University have some excellent practical guidance on Writing Good Multiple Choice Questions, including how to write an effective stem and answer options, as well as how to avoid some common pitfalls. Much of the guidance also applies to other automatically marked question types.

Difficulty of questions can be determined by the complexity of the question stem, and the similarity of the ‘distractors’ (incorrect answer options) where these are used. Common errors can be a good starting point when writing distractors.

• Multiple choice: consider setting questions where students must apply their knowledge to work out which is the correct answer, for example by a process of elimination, or by performing calculations.
• Multiple answer: require an exact match, or allow marks for partially correct responses.
• True or false: consider using in a diagnostic test to evaluate students’ existing knowledge of a topic, for example by basing questions on common misconceptions, or surprising aspects of a topic.
• Fill in the blank: students must insert answers into pre-defined fields.  Blanks can be open text entry, or give students a list of options to select from. Consider asking students to fill in blanks in a sentence, list or table.
• Matching: requires students to match items from one list against items in another list. Consider including additional distractors to increase complexity.
• Ordering: students sort answer options into a specific order, for example chronological, hierarchical, stages in a process.
• Categorisation: asks students to sort multiple answer items into pre-defined categories. Consider including additional distractors to increase complexity.
• Hot Spot: asks students to select a point or area on an image in answer to a question. Can be used with any image file type, for example a photograph, diagram, map, graph or chart.
• Numeric: requires the student to give a numeric answer.  Choose whether to require an exact response, allow answers within a range, or accept a margin of error.
• Formula: build a question based on a formula, with a set of possible answer combinations. Each student is presented with a randomly selected set of variables filled in, and they have to type the correct numerical answer.
• File upload: require students to submit one or more files as part of a quiz. Control the number of files, and the file type(s) that students are allowed to submit. Submissions can be marked in Canvas speed grader.
• Essay: students type a written response that is marked manually. Note that this can be used for short written answer questions, but quizzes are not recommended for long written answer or essay exam questions. Choose whether to set a word limit, and whether to allow students to use spell check. 
• Stimulus: provide some stimulus content, for example a scenario or case study, and associate one or more questions with it. Associated questions can be any question type.     

• Quizzes should comply with general guidance for ensuring online content is accessible Accessibility and Inclusion. This is essential in the context of assessment, to ensure that no students are disadvantaged.
• Ensure that you provide ALT text for images.
• If colour is used, make sure that it is not the only way that meaning is communicated. For example, if part of a diagram is highlighted in a particular colour add a label as well.
• Note that the Hot Spot question type is not accessible to students using screen readers, or who need to navigate using keyboard commands instead of a mouse or touchpad.

Depending on the purpose of the quiz, students need to prepare in different ways. When using a quiz for summative assessment build in opportunities to practice beforehand: this helps to ensure that you test students on the assessment content, rather than their mastery of the assessment tool.

Before setting students a quiz clearly communicate:

• the purpose of the assessment
• the types of questions/tasks it will include
• the learning outcomes it will assess
• how to access the quiz, when it will be available, and any other specific instructions
• set expectations about what kind of feedback students will receive and when  

• Releasing feedback automatically from system marked questions is one way to provide students with more opportunities to receive feedback, without increasing the marking burden on tutors.
• You can control how much information about the questions students can view in their feedback. Where appropriate for the question type consider showing items and questions, student response, correct answer and item feedback, or a combination of these options. 
• In Canvas New Quizzes for all question types you can add feedback to be released for correct and incorrect answers, and general overall feedback. As well as text you can embed images, media and links. 
• For formative assessments consider adding feedback to explain why an answer is correct/incorrect, and to signpost students to resources to support further learning (either within your Canvas module, or elsewhere online).  

Canvas New Quizzes automatically generates a report after a quiz has taken place. The report includes key statistical data about student outcomes, and item analysis of the questions. Use the data to:

• Confirm the answer key is correct. If you discover questions where a large proportion of students have been marked incorrect, there could be an error or ambiguity in the question wording. In this situation you can re-grade a question, this will update the marks for all students who have completed the quiz.
• Evaluate question difficulty, and how well the questions discriminate. This is especially useful if you plan to use quiz questions again in future assessments.  

• Consider adding questions to an Item Bank, so that you can easily find them to reuse in future quizzes.
• Add tags to questions so that you can filter within the item bank to easily find them again. For example you could add a tag for the topic, difficulty level, or learning outcome that the question assesses.