Bad Boy Quizzes

[Patrizia Leones]

Whyare the new quizzes so horrible? How someone could pitch these new ideas on how to improve the old quizzes and not have the whole room throw insults and/or objects at them is mind boggling. The fact that I can't see separate sections and see induvial responses is horrible. Oh, and the fact that I have to go to a different screen to set the due date and points makes me feel great! The random order of students when moderating the quiz is by far the best upgrade!

New quizzes have quite a few issues that are works-in-progress. Fortunately work is actually in progress and we have access to forums to provide feedback about features that new quizzes need to add/fix and why those features matter here: -Quizzes-Users/bg-p/quizzesblog-board

I agree. They are horribly dumb. Did they even test these with actual teachers? They are clunky, frustrating and are a waste of my time. No thanks. Blarg, blarg, blarg... They are unintuitive and provide no experience incentive to use them. Nope. So bad!!!!

The fact that the migration process isn't as straight forward is frustrating (for me anyway). So many things need to be looked at is an issue, especially when you have hundreds of quizzes to migrate. We just got quizzes to a place where only minor changes need to be made yearly, now it looks like we basically have to build everything and go through the arduous process all over again.

Why doesn't text (no question) style questions from classic quiz exist in new quizzes is a joke. Feeling frustrated at the idea of migrating hundreds of quizzes across to new quizzes, and this frustration is only increased when I view what the new quizzes look like in comparison to classic. Personally, I don't feel like they are as aesthetically pleasing for students to view (particularly primary students).

In addition to this, I'm not sure how you are currently migrating your Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes (maybe one by one?). You might want to have a conversation with your school's Canvas administrator ... as there is a bulk migration tool that Instructure has been working on (though I'm not sure if it's yet available for everyone). You can find more information on this tool by checking out: Beta Release Notes: New Quizzes Migration (2021-12... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com). Bulk migrating your Classic Quizzes in this way would certainly be quicker than what you may currently be doing at the moment.

Regarding your question about text (no question) question types. I'm not sure I have an answer for the "why", but I do know there is a comparison chart available that you can look at which is listed under "Other Resources": New Quizzes Transition Toolkit - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com). As you can see, you can still use a Stimulus question type in New Quizzes, but you need to have a question attached to it (detailed on page 4 of the linked document).

I agree. It is so slow, and it takes so many more clicks to do what used to be easy. It is more complicated to do simple things, and the steps are not intuitive. It makes the quiz function less useful, and I can't see why that would be a goal. I have tried to use it and it frequently ends up with me searching how to do something I could easily do before and finding a multi-step process that takes longer. I hope they choose to show us what is better about new quizzes, because I haven't found anything from the user perspective. Instead, it seems we just have to figure out how to do what we could already do successfully before.

I have banked all of my test/quiz questions in new quizzes in individual banks for the past couple of years. Everything worked fine last semester but all of a sudden questions do not have the pictures that I embed into them when students go to take the quiz. I can see the pictures but they cannot. I do have the banks shared with my current course and still have this issue.

Whenever someone says "I can see the pictures but my students cannot", my first thought is that there is a problem with the image links in the test, and the image links are actually pointing copies of image files that are stored in a previous course (which you have access to, but the students in your current course do not).

You should at least try running the Link Validation tool ( -Guide/How-do-I-validate-links-in-a-course/ta-p/1001 ), though I'm not 100% sure that it works with New Quizzes and item banks. It should at least tell you if it's able to spot a problem with the image link permissions.

I decided to convert to new quizzes this semester and I have similar issues with the pictures. My students are using Lockdown browser. I am at a loss on how to fix this since for some students all the pictures are showing up, for some only a few are showing up and again for others no pictures are showing up.

This makes me think that it is an issue on the student end but I am not sure how to fix this problem. I have looked at the link validation and they are all good in the course. Any help would be great!

If you have converted existing quizzes to New Quizzes, and are having problems with the images showing up with LockDown Browser, I believe it's best to contact Respondus Support to see if there is a workaround.

This is what Respondus suggested to us in this same situation: "Because re-embedding all the images is quite tedious, other instructors might be interested in this workaround, which happily allowed me to bypass that unnecessary extra work: When I grouped into a single Classic Exam the Classic Quizzes and banks that I wanted to migrate into a New Quiz bank, downloaded that exam as a QTI file, uploaded that QTI file as a New Quiz bank, and created a New Quiz based on that bank, then the images loaded correctly in Lockdown Browser."

I have been investigating this problem. I can explain why it is happening and I would call it a bug. In NQ, when you add a question to an item bank and add links or images to the question, the resulting URL points to the course in which the question was created. For example:

As a result, only the students in that one course can view these items, which is very unfortunate because banks are supposed to work in any course. When new questions with links to course files are added to a bank, there's a warning about this before you save the question, but the warning is not at all helpful.

As you may recall, in Classic Quizzes, it is possible to reuse question banks in any course without this problem. The links work in classic quizzes because all files referenced in the question are copied to a hidden file store and the links are updated when the question is saved. The links for these files are not course specific and students are allowed to view them whereever the bank is used. Here's a sample link from a question in a classic question bank:

It's not clear to me why a similar approach was not implemented in NQ Item banks. One the bright side, when legacy banks are migrated to New Quizzes, the links continue to work because they do not reference a specific course.

I am going to submit a bug report to hopefully draw more attention to this issue. At minimum, the current limitations should be documented in the Canvas Guide, How do I add content to an item bank in New Quizzes?

Just did some additional digging. The broken images seem to be a recent problem. I found examples of embedded images in questions in older banks. The URL for this images include a verifier parameter that is not present when I embed an image in a new bank question. So, I think this may be a relatively recent regression. I reported a bug and willl get back to this group when I hear back from Instructure.

I have been going crazy trying to figure out why this just recently happened. All of the images from the banks I created a few weeks ago are still working, but they have a verifier part where the others don't.

I too see that some images have a verifier parameter, these are the images that work. However, now when uploading an image, or using a course image in an Item Bank question, there is no verifier parameter.

This is a very frustrating issue. Images in Item Banks should not be associated with a course, they should be able to be used in any course. One of the workarounds is to link to images from a public course or website, but surely Canvas can make this work without a workaround.

Yes, uploading to Personal Files does work, but it's not the default workflow for the Canvas RCE, it requires more steps than just uploading images while authoring questions, and faculty who are unaware of this bug will continue uploading to course Files without realizing the links and images won't work in other classes. Hopefully, Instructure will acknowledge and fix this bug very quickly.

Hello Jane,

Thank you for contacting Respondus Support.

This is a known issue that we reported to Canvas. You'll want to contact Canvas Support to inquire as to a timeline on their fix. You can reference Canvas Case 10188336 when you email them.

It seems to occur when a classic quiz is migrated to "new quizzes" format. But a similar issue can also occur for a brand new "new quizzes" exam, depending on how the image was embedded and what file space the image resides in.

Until Canvas can provide a long term fix for this bug, they have supplied the following workaround:

1) Upload the images first to the user's user file space (not the course file space.) I presume they mean the instructor's user file space.

2) Then, embed the images into the question from that user file space (not the course file space.)

3) After doing this, the images should display when using LockDown Browser.

In our testing, this method does work, displaying the images successfully both for a brand new "new quizzes" exam, as well as a "classic" exam that has been migrated into "new quizzes" format.

Regards,

Bob

If this is a New Quizzes type exam, this is a known issue that we reported to Canvas. You'll want to contact Canvas Support to inquire as to a timeline on their fix. You can reference Canvas Case 10188336 when you email them.

It seems to occur when a classic quiz is migrated to "new quizzes" format. But a similar issue can also occur for a brand new "new quizzes" exam, depending on how the image was embedded and what file space the image resides in.

Canvas Support has supplied the following workaround:

1) Upload the images first to the user's user file space (not the course file space.) I presume they mean the instructor's user file space.

2) Then, embed the images into the question from that user file space (not the course file space.)

3) After doing this, the images should display when using LockDown Browser.

In our testing, this method does work, displaying the images successfully both for a brand new "new quizzes" exam, as well as a "classic" exam that has been migrated into "new quizzes" format.

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