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Home UM3D Canvas Quizzes in Canvas

Quizzes in Canvas

Though you and your students use the terms "test" and "quiz" interchangeably, Canvas calls this type of assessment a "Quiz." Be sure to use this language yourself to avoid student confusion.

As with the assessments in a face-to-face classroom, the assessments in your online course will give you the opportunity to gauge student understanding of course content.

Using Canvas Quizzes in Your Teaching

  • Ugraded quizzes allow students to self-check on concepts covered.
  • Graded quizzes assess student understanding of material.
  • You can add feedback to each quiz question to provide a correct answer, explanation, a reference (e.g., textbook page number), and so forth.
  • View quiz statistics showing how many students (and what percentage of the class) chose each possible response to a quiz question.

Quiz question types include the following:

  • Multiple-choice
  • Multiple answer
  • True/false
  • Matching
  • Fill-in-the-blank (and fill-in-multiple-blanks)
  • Numerical answer
  • Short answer
  • Essay
  • File upload
  • Hotspot
  • and more

The video below provides a basic overview of the Quizzes tool.

304 - Quizzes Overview from Instructure Canvas Community on Vimeo.

Considerations for Using Canvas Quizzes

  • Using question groups allows you to randomize questions within that group. You can also set up the quiz to display fewer questions than are in the group; for example, the group could contain 4 questions, and students are given 3 of those questions. This is one way to increase quiz security; it is harder for students to share quiz details when they did not take the same version of the quiz.
  • If you use question groups, try to make sure the questions in a group assess similar objectives and are at a similar level of difficulty, especially if you have set the quiz to display fewer questions than are in the group.
  • If you want to prevent students from accessing a quiz until a specific date/time, use the “Available From” setting to designate that date/time—but don’t leave the quiz unpublished, as you risk forgetting to publish it before students are to begin taking it.
  • If you use the “Available Until” setting, allow some extra time for late starts, technical difficulty, etc. For example, if your time limit on the quiz is 1 hour, make the quiz available for 90 minutes. 

Quiz Accomodations

If you have a student with documented ADA accommodations, you may need to adjust your quiz settings. Use Moderate This Quiz to provide specific students with extra time or attempts. This option will only appear after the quiz is published.