Coming Soon to Canvas: New Quizzes

In July 2022, Canvas’s updated quizzing tool, New Quizzes, will replace classic quizzes. New Quizzes is available now in all Northwestern courses and it is recommended for instructors to start using New Quizzes over the winter and spring quarters to get used to the changes prior to a complete switch from classic quizzes during the transition from spring to summer quarters 2022.

A good place to begin with new quizzes is to view this feature comparison between classic quizzes and New Quizzes. There will not be exact feature parity between the two, so it’s best to approach New Quizzes as if you are learning a new tool. And while many of the same functionality exists in both versions, a number of enhancements or new question types are available in New Quizzes:

• New features include a waiting period between multiple attempts, the ability to shuffle questions on a quiz, more fill-in-the-blank word recognition options, and the ability to provide a time accommodation for a student for all quiz attempts in a course.
• New question types include categorization, stimulus, hot spot, and ordering.

Step 2: bookmark the New Quizzes landing page in the Canvas Learning Center. Teaching & Learning Technologies will be regularly updating this page throughout the transition with relevant information and best practices for utilizing new or updated features.

Getting Started

To enable New Quizzes in a course:

1. Click on the course Settings
2. Click on the tab for Feature Previews
3. Open the drop-down for New Quizzes and click the icon on the right-hand side of the line to Enable

Migrating a Classic Quiz into New Quizzes

Once New Quizzes has been enabled in your course, you can now update (“migrate” in Canvas lingo) a classic quiz into New Quizzes. To migrate a quiz from a classic quiz into New Quizzes, follow these steps:

1. In the course site that you want to copy a quiz from, click on Settings in the course navigation
2. On the right-hand side of the page, click on the option to Export Course Content
3. Select Course from the options, then click the blue Export button
4. An option for New Export will appear at the top of the page when it has completed processing, click it to download an IMSCC file
5. From the new course site you want to import the quizzes into, go to the course Settings and click the option to Import Course Content on the right-hand side
6. Select Canvas Course Export Package from the dropdown menu and choose the file you just exported from the content picker
7. Click the option to Select specific content and then click the blue Import button
8. Once it has finished processing, click the Select Content button and click the checkbox next to Quiz (Assignments will also automatically be checked when you click on the line for Quiz), then proceed with the import
9. Once the import is complete, click on Quizzes in the course navigation
10. On the line for the quiz you want to convert to New Quizzes, click on the three-dot icon on the far right-hand side, then select Migrate
11. The New Quizzes version of the quiz will appear below the classic quiz in an unpublished state which you may now update** 

** Be sure to review any questions that contain formatting beyond simple text. The rich content editor used to do formatting of classic quizzes in Canvas is not supported in New Quizzes and those questions will likely need to be rebuilt to work with New Quizzes. 

Need help getting started? Email us at canvas@northwestern.edu.