Introduction

A quiz is a type of assignment in Canvas with unique features and options. This page includes activities and resources to help you create quizzes and item banks in your Canvas course using the New Quizzes tool.

On This Page:

1. New Quizzes overview
2. Create a quiz
3. Add questions
4. Create item banks
5. Customize quiz availability
6. Grade a quiz, align outcomes, and access reports
7. Moderate attempts and add accommodations

Live Training

Creating New Quizzes is a 1.5 hour introductory session designed to teach you how to create and manage quizzes in your Canvas course, and provide an understanding of the updated and new functionalities. Penn State is only supporting the creation of New Quizzes from scratch at this time. This session only includes information on creating New Quizzes. We will not cover migration or item banks (question banks) in the session.

Canvas: Creating New Quizzes (Online Sessions)

New Quizzes overview

New Quizzes is the Canvas quiz engine which will eventually replace the existing Classic quiz engine. Read the following documentation for an introduction to New Quizzes, a comparison with Classic Quizzes, and a series of FAQs from Instructure:

Canvas: Get Started with New Quizzes (PSU resource)
What is New Quizzes? (External resource)
Canvas New Quizzes Feature Comparison (External resource)
FAQ: New Quizzes (External resource)

Watch the video tutorial for a brief overview of how to use New Quizzes in your courses:

New Quizzes Overview video, 4m 29s

Create a quiz

You can create a quiz using New Quizzes from the Quizzes link in the course navigation menu. Review the following tutorials to learn how to build and edit a quiz:

How do I create a quiz using New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I create an anonymously graded quiz using New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I edit a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)

You can customize the way a quiz is presented to students with a variety of settings, including question and answer shuffling, time and attempt limits, access restrictions, and more. Use the following tutorials for guidance as you select the appropriate settings for your quiz:

How do I manage settings for a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I edit the assignment details of a New Quizzes quiz? (External resource)
How do I restrict students from viewing quiz results in New Quizzes? (External resource)

Add quiz questions

Guidance for designing effective assessments

Download this Designing Assessments guide (created in collaboration with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence) to help select the quiz question types most suitable for your needs:

Designing Assessments: Common Item Types (PSU resource)

For more in-depth information about designing effective quiz questions, visit our quiz questions mini-site:

Writing Effective Quiz Questions (PSU resource)

Improve the clarity and understanding of your quiz questions and reduce grading disputes with a validity and reliability analysis. Visit the Penn State Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence to learn more and to arrange a consultation on improving your quizzes:

Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence (SITE) (PSU resource)

Email: site@psu.edu

Question types available in New Quizzes

There are several different question types to choose from when you are creating a quiz using New Quizzes. Select a question type from the following list to review a tutorial on how to use it in New Quizzes:

Categorization questions require students to place items into correct categories while ignoring distractors.
Essay questions are used to assess student writing ability and subject knowledge. The questions are followed by a text box.
File Upload questions allow students to upload files as their responses.
Fill in the Blank questions can have multiple blank spaces and have various answer types.
Formula questions contain a formula with variables and variable ranges set by the instructor.
Matching questions are two adjacent lists of related words, phrases, pictures, or symbols. Each item in one list is paired with at least one item in the other list.
Multiple Answer questions are followed by a list of choices; multiple selections are allowed.
Multiple Choice questions consist of two parts. The first is a question or incomplete statement called the “stem.” The second is the list of possible responses. Incorrect answers are also known as distractors.
Numeric questions only accept numbers and number-related characters as the response.
True or False questions are a statement that is either correct or incorrect.
Stimulus content consists of group of questions centered around a piece of content. That piece of content can be a document, website, an image or even a video.

NOTE: Hot Spot and Ordering questions are also available, but are not recommended for use at Penn State because they are not accessible for users who rely on screen readers.

Managing quiz questions

Visit the following tutorials to learn how to make adjustments to existing questions in New Quizzes:

How do I duplicate an individual question in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I add feedback to a question in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I reorder questions in New Quizzes? (External resource)

Create item banks

If you would like to share a series of questions to another course you teach or with another instructor who teaches the same or a similar course, an item bank may be exactly what you need. Item banks are not required for creating a quiz, but some instructors find it helpful to create question banks for a variety of reasons. They are comparable to question banks in Classic Quizzes.

The following tutorials can help you learn the steps for creating item banks in New Quizzes:

How do I create an item bank in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I add content to an item bank in New Quizzes? (External resource)

The following tutorials can help you learn the steps for managing item banks in New Quizzes:

How do I manage item banks in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I edit an item bank item in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I add an item from an item bank to a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I add all items or a random set from an item bank to a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I move or copy a question from one item bank to another in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I duplicate an Item Bank? (External resource)
How do I share an item bank in New Quizzes? (External resource)

Customize quiz availability

If you would like to limit students' access to a quiz in your course, consider the following options:

Publish/Unpublish

Publishing is a manual process, and it overrides all other availability settings. When an item is unpublished in your course, it is completely invisible to students.

Lock/Unlock

You can lock a quiz manually by selecting the option to "lock this quiz now" via the quiz settings button, or automatically by date using the availability dates on the quiz settings page. When a quiz is locked using either of these methods, students will not be able to complete the quiz or access the quiz questions, but they will still be able to see the quiz title, description, and due date via the Gradebook, calendar, and wherever the quiz appears in your course (e.g. in a course module).

Grade a quiz, align outcomes, and access reports

While most quiz questions are graded automatically when a student submits a quiz, some question types such as essays and file uploads need to be graded manually. You can grade New Quizzes in SpeedGrader by following the process outlined in these tutorials:

How do I grade a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I regrade a quiz question in New Quizzes? (External resource)

If you use outcomes in your courses, you can align outcomes to quizzes and individual questions from quizzes. See the following tutorials for instructions:

How do I align an outcome to a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I align an outcome to a quiz question in New Quizzes? (External resource)

New Quizzes provides access to reports analyzing quizzes, quiz items, and outcomes. Read the following tutorial to learn how to access reports:

How do I view reports for a quiz in New Quizzes? (External resource)

Moderation and accommodations

Read the following tutorials to learn how to monitor student progress and customize quiz availability for individual students:

How do I use the Moderation page in New Quizzes? (External resource)
How do I moderate a student's quiz attempt in New Quizzes? (External resource)

Read the following tutorial to learn how to assign a different due date for individual student(s) or course sections:

How do I add accommodations for a student in New Quizzes? (External resource)