As the transition to New Quizzes in Canvas@UD continues, the LMS team will continue to post tool and transition updates to keep instructors informed. At this time, Canvas is still not planning to enforce New Quizzes use, but its use in Canvas@UD is growing. Before New Quizzes was enabled by default as a feature option in all courses starting in 2023 Fall, New Quizzes accounted for approximately 8% of all quizzes in Canvas sites. One year later in 2024 Fall, New Quizzes now accounts for 25% of all Canvas quizzes in Canvas sites. In both terms, about 59% of all Canvas sites used a Canvas Quizzes tool.
The last newsletter update in February recommended continuing to use Classic Quizzes if you depend on the ability to modify available time for an in-progress quiz and to export statistics as a csv file – two major features from Classic Quizzes still not available in New Quizzes. Since that last post, Canvas has added the New Quizzes item analysis download capability. The downloaded csv file includes all metrics generated and displayed in the user Interface, except for the question text. This report is similar to the Classic Quizzes item analysis and is available on the Reports tab in the New Quizzes builder. According to the New Quizzes roadmap, a student analysis report is expected soon.
As of October 30, Canvas has also added the ability add time to existing quiz sessions so an instructors can moderate a quiz and extend the time allotted for an in-progress quiz.
Does the availability of these new features mean you should start migrating your existing Classic Quizzes? The LMS team would recommend that you consider doing so in a staging site, if only to familiarize yourself with the interface and workflow. But if rely on question groups and question banks in Classic Quizzes, the team recommends starting your migration plan soon. Item banks, as they are named in New Quizzes, are stored differently, and you will need to plan your bank migration organizationally. Question Banks are stored in an individual Canvas course. If you copy the entire course, you get a new copy of the bank. Question Banks are not easily modified if an edit to a question needs to be made once the quiz is underway, and sharing Question Banks between colleagues is not very straightforward. Alternatively, Item Banks are centralized repositories of questions for your account. You may need better organization and a more robust naming convention since you will not make a new copy every time you import a previous course. Item Banks can be easily shared with other Canvas users, and you have to share them to provide access to your TA or other teachers in your course.
Canvas currently does not offer a direct Question Bank to Item Bank migration tool as it does with quizzes, but the LMS team can assist with some workarounds and provide more information about migrating your quizzes. Request a consultation if needed. Once you feel comfortable with New Quizzes, you do not need to transition immediately. New Quizzes is an entirely different tool than Classic Quizzes, which means you can use both in the same Canvas course, but we would recommend you inform your students.
For more information, visit the New Quizzes Instructor Guide or the New Quizzes Hub. If you have any questions about your quizzes or about how to use Canvas effectively, IT-Academic Technology Services staff is always available at the IT-ATS Welcome Bar or you can send your questions to canvas-info@udel.edu.
