Creating a quiz

Quizzes

There are four main types of quizzes on Canvas:

1. The most frequent type of quiz is a graded quiz, which awards points to students depending on their quiz responses.
2. A practice quiz is a learning tool that assesses students' comprehension of course material without assigning a grade.
3. A graded survey is one where students receive points for completing the survey, but the scoring is not dependent on correct or incorrect answers. This can be an item that contributes to participation points.
4. An ungraded survey is one that collects opinions or other data without assigning a grade.

Quizzes can be used to:

• Create new quizzes consisting of single questions and groups of questions.
• Create question banks.
• Import external quizzes.
• Create quizzes for the entire class, individual students, or specific course sections.

Creating a quiz with individual questions

To create a quiz with individual questions, follow the directions in the steps below.

Step 1: Click the Quizzes link in the Course Navigation.

Step 2: Click the Add Quiz button.

Step 3: Choose a Quiz engine. If New Quizzes is enabled in your course, you must choose a quiz engine. Learn more the differences between quiz engines from here. Links to an external site.

1. Click the Classic Quizzes option to create a classic quiz. Recommended at NUS. Do not use the New Quizzes option. NUS does not recommend the use of New Quizzes in Canvas is still in development (Beta stage) and may have some limitations, issues and/or bugs. It is scheduled for a full launch during the 3rd quarter of 2024. Please use at your own risk.
2. Click the "Remember my choice for this course" checkbox to save your quiz engine selection for your course. 
3. Then press the Submit button.

Step 4: Edit quiz details in the "Details" tab.  Enter the name of your quiz. Write instructions to students about the quiz with text, images, video, or math equations in the Rich Content Editor. You may also record an introduction to the quiz using the media commenting option. Complete the rest of the quiz details.

Step 5: Click the "Questions" tab. By clicking the "New Question" button , you can manually construct a new quiz question.

Step 6: Name your quiz question. Quiz questions are not automatically numbered. Fill in the question text field with a custom name for your quiz question. Custom names might make it easier to recognize quiz questions. Students always see quiz questions in numerical sequence, regardless of the question's name (i.e. Question 1, Question 2).

Step 7: You may construct the following types of quiz questions using the question type drop-down menu: 

• Multiple Choice
• True/False
• Fill-in-the-Blank
• Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks
• Multiple Answers
• Multiple Drop-down (can be used for Likert scale)
• Matching
• Numerical Answer
• Formula (simple formula and single variable)
• Essay
• File Upload

You can link course information, such as a diagram to create Quiz questions. Read the article, "How do I link course content to a quiz question?" Links to an external site. to learn more about it.

Step 8: Enter the points in the "pts" field to set the point value for the question. 

Note You can use up to two decimal places in your quiz point values. If you enter more than two decimal places, the point value will be rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Step 9: Click the "Update Question" button to save your question. You can create additional Quiz questions for this Quiz.

Step 10: To save your work and see a preview of the quiz, click the "Save" option. Click the "Save & Publish" button when you're ready to publish your quiz and make it available to students.

Note Please keep in mind that you should not publish your quiz until it is complete.

Step 11: To see what students will see when they take the quiz, you can click the "Preview" button.

Note While you can make changes to the quiz after it has been published, students who have already opened or completed it will not notice the changes, which could influence their grades.

Creating a survey

To learn about creating a survey, look through the list of resources below.

Survey

• How do I create a survey in my course? Links to an external site.
• How do I view survey results in a course? Links to an external site. Links to an external site.
• What options can I set in a quiz? Links to an external site.

Let's take a look at how to create different question types to use in your quizzes. Click "Next".