In Canvas there are many different ways to assess your students. Below are some suggestions for options for setting up assessments using tools available from within Canvas. There is no one way nor a right or wrong way. You will need to figure out what works best for you, for what skills and knowledge you are assessing and for the students in your course.
Table of Contents
This article will address the following information:
If you don't already have one, request a Canvas Sandbox site. Your Canvas Sandbox site can be used to try out various Canvas and third-party integration tools before you decide which to implement.
Anything you create in your Sandbox site can be imported into your official Canvas course site.
Framing your assessment and considering the landscape of your students will help you easily navigate what types of assessments are best suited to your course and your students.
Remember:
- Be patient - especially if you are trying a new type of assessment. There could be a learning curve for both you and your students, but the outcome will be rewarding.
- Be flexible - some students may have internet / bandwidth or other issues that may require you to provide an alternative assessment method.
- Remote students may be in different time zones - although you should try your best to stay within the confines of your regularly scheduled class meeting times, for students with time zone differences greater than 5 hours you may want to consider offering alternative times for them to take restricted date quizzes.
- Talk to your students - students may not always feel comfortable communicating their needs. Be sure to check in with students and make sure that they are okay with the parameters of your assessment and adjust accordingly.
- Have a back-up plan - Life happens and it is always important to be ready for those cases when a student loses their internet connection or has a family emergency that prevents them from taking the assessment at the scheduled time. Being prepared for unforeseen circumstances will ensure that you are able to quickly adapt to the changing needs of your students.
Start by thinking about the following:
- What are your goals for this assessment?
- What knowledge and / or skills are you assessing?
- What types of questions / activities will help you assess your students?
There are many types of assessments and many tools you could use to create your assessment. Most assessments can be configured to work with the Canvas Quizzes or Canvas Assignments tools. Below is a chart showing guidelines for when you might choose to use a Canvas Assignment versus a Canvas Quiz.
| Canvas Assignment | Canvas Quiz |
|---|---|
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Submission Details
Configuration Details
Grading
Common Assessment Types
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Submission Details
Configuration Details
Grading
Common Assessment Types
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All Canvas Assignments and Canvas Quizzes allow instructors to set 3 dates for each activity. These dates are:
Due / Available / Until Dates
- Due Date - Date and time when you want students to submit the activity. Submissions can be submitted after this date, but will be marked as late both to the student when they submit and to the instructor in the Grades / SpeedGrader.
- Available Date - Date and time when the activity will become open for students to view and complete the activity. If a student clicks on the assignment prior to this date, they will see a message indicating that the activity is currently locked and will open on the Available Date.
- Until Date - Date and time after which students can no longer submit the activity.** Students who click on the assignment after the due date will see a message saying that the activity was locked on the Until Date. If a student is in a Quiz when the until date passes, their Quiz will auto-submit at the Until Date / Time.
**The "Until" date set within a Quiz's settings will OVERRIDE a Quiz Time Limit. If a quiz has a 1 hour Time Limit and a student opens the quiz 5 minutes before the Until Date / Time, the student will only get 5 minutes to complete the Quiz.
Recommendations:
- Some remote students may have reduced internet / bandwidth. Consider adding buffer timing on your assessment dates to allow for unforeseen issues.
- Some remote students may be in different time zones. For most students, maintaining the usual class time is ideal to avoid conflicts with other course work, but definitely talk to your students and consider setting up alternative assessment dates and times.
Quiz Timers
Canvas Quizzes allow instructors to set a time limit on their assessment. Quiz timers will do the following:
- The timer will not begin until the student sees the first question on the Quiz.
- If using Respondus LockDown Browser, the timer will not start until the student has successfully loaded the quiz in the LockDown Browser and sees the first question on the Quiz.
- When the timer runs out, the Quiz is auto-submitted to Canvas—whether the student is finished or not.
- If a student closes the Quiz window, the timer will continue to count down.
The "Until" date set within a Quiz's settings will OVERRIDE a Quiz Time Limit. If a quiz has a 1 hour Time Limit and a student opens the quiz 5 minutes before the Until Date / Time, the student will only get 5 minutes to complete the Quiz.
Canvas uses the Grade Posting Policy to control whether students see their scores immediately when entered (automatic) or whether instructors will need to manually post / release the grades (manual). You can refer to our help article on Using the Grade Posting Policy for full details. The links below will open the article to the specific topic listed:
General Best Practices for Preparing and Implementing Assessments Through Canvas
- If you do not have one, request a Canvas Sandbox site.
- Use your Canvas Sandbox site to try different types of assessments and activity types.
- Build and test out your assessments in your Canvas Sandbox site—you can import the final version into your official course.
- Use the Student View feature to take your assessments and see exactly what your students will see.
- Try new tools and create different types of assessments.
- Store files / images used in your graded quizzes and assignments in the Hidden Files folder in your course site's Files area.
- Set up low-stakes assessments using your preferred Canvas tools so both you and your students can try it out before an official exam.
- Communicate with your students frequently to let them know how you are assessing them and what tools you will be using.
- Schedule time-restricted assessments to occur during your regularly scheduled class time—talk to remote students about concerns they may have if they are in a vastly different time zone.
Have questions? Contact [email protected].
With remote students, it is important to remember that students will be working on their private internet connections. Make sure that for your assessment you take into account that students who have limited internet / bandwidth may not be able to participate real-time with bandwidth-heavy interactions (videos, large downloads, etc.). Students might also be impacted if your assessment includes a timer.
Consider padding your due date timed assessments to allow for students encountering technical difficulties.
Instructor "Gotchas"
Files:
- Files / images stored in the files area are by default visible to students when they go to the Files button in your course. Use the Hidden Files Folder to store protected files that you do not want students to access early.
- Canvas does not prevent downloading of files—if you want to prevent students from downloading your file, you can store the file in Box, EliApps (Google) Drive, or OneDrive (with download permissions turned off) and link to that file in your quiz / assignment.
Quizzes:
- Until Dates / Quiz Timers - Until date will supercede the students’ timer.
- Until Dates are not timers - Quiz timers (as set in the settings of the individual quiz) should be used for this and can be moderated accordingly.
- File Upload questions cannot be done with LockDown Browser.
- File Upload question submissions cannot be graded in SpeedGrader.
- Randomizing questions is done through Question Groups.
- All questions in the question group must be worth the same number of points.
Assignments:
- You cannot give an individual student additional attempts beyond the maximum number attempts established in the settings of an assignment.
- To accommodate a second attempt, you would need to create a duplicate copy of the assignment and assign the duplicate to just that student.
- SpeedGrader annotations can be anonymous to your students, but comments in the Assignments Comment box cannot.
- SpeedGrader annotations can only be used on Assignment file upload submissions with compatible file types.
- Assignments with Turnitin enabled:
- Must have a due date that is set when the assignment is first created. This is when your students’ submissions will be compared against each other in Turnitin. If you do not set it immediately upon creation, the Turnitin compare date will be 2 weeks from the date you first created the assignment
- If you are doing “draft” versions of a submission, do not store the draft versions in the institutional repository or else you could get false positives on the final draft.
Grade Posting Policy:
- "Automatic Grade Posting Policy" will allow students to see their grade as soon as you enter it.
- "Manual Grade Posting Policy" will allow the instructor to complete grading and then release grades all at once.
- If you change the Grade Posting Policy after you have entered some student grades, the grades that you already entered will still honor the Grade Posting Policy that was present at the time the grade was entered.
Students "Gotchas"
Assignments:
- Annotation feedback on Assignments is viewable by going to the Grades area, clicking on the Assignment and then clicking the "View Feedback" link.
- Whenever submitting files for grading, keep file names simple and avoid including your name—instructors may incorporate blind grading which does not mask the file name.
Quizzes:
- If the quiz / exam is not using LockDown Browser, you can close your quiz / browser and resume the quiz at any time before the quiz expires.
- If you have not done so manually, your quiz attempt will auto submit when your timer expires or the quiz closes (on the "Until" date / time), whichever comes first.
- If your quiz has both a timer and an "Until" (close) date / time, the "Until" (close) date / time will override your timer. Make sure that you open and begin your quiz with ample time before the "Until" date / time so you will get the full amount of time on your timer.
- You can use the quiz navigation to jump to questions and flag questions
Quizzes
1. Creating and Setting Up a Canvas Quiz
One of the options available for Quizzes is to set a "Time Limit" which restricts students to have only a set amount of time to complete the Quiz. The timer will begin the moment the student opens the quiz and will auto-submit when the timer runs out.
The Quiz's "Until" date set within the Quiz's settings will OVERRIDE a Quiz timer. If a quiz has a 1 hour timer and a student opens the quiz 5 minutes before the "Until" Date / Time, the student will only get 5 minutes to complete the Quiz.
Typically a "Text (no question)" question is used to break up the exam questions into parts or to provide information for a series of questions.
Use the Hidden Files folder in your course site's Files area to store content used on your graded assessments. The Hidden Files folder will hide the content from students when they go to the Files area, but will be viewable to them when you link to the file in your Quiz Question or Assignment.
2. Advanced Quiz Features
A Question / Item Bank is a repository that stores questions that you can use and reuse on multiple Quizzes. These banks can simplify the process of creating copies of quizzes, help create varied tests by randomly pulling questions from a bank, and to randomize the order of questions on a Quiz.
Even if you did not specifically create a Question / Item Bank, all of the questions from your Canvas quizzes are by default stored in an Unfiled Questions Question Bank. You can copy and / or move your Quiz questions to other Question Banks if desired.
If you are including a File Upload type question in your Canvas Quiz, DO NOT use LockDown Browser.
It is highly recommended that you create a practice LockDown Browser quiz for students to complete a few days before your actual assessment.
This will give students time to download / install the browser and troubleshoot issues before hand.
3. Quiz Scheduling and Student Accommodations
Due dates you set will be in Eastern Standard Time (EST). If you have remote students in other time zones, they can modify their personal time zone settings in Canvas so that due dates appear in their local time.
If / when setting a different schedule for a student(s), make sure that you check with them to ensure that the date / time you select does not conflict with other course work or obligations.
The "Until" date set within a Quiz's settings will OVERRIDE a Quiz Time Limit. If a quiz has a 1 hour Time Limit and you provide a student with 30 extra minutes—if the student opens the quiz 5 minutes before the "Until" date / time, the student will only get 5 minutes to complete the Quiz.
4. Viewing Student Quiz Results
5. Grading Canvas Quizzes
5.1. Grading Quizzes through SpeedGrader
5.2. Regrading Auto-Scored Questions
6. Canvas Quiz Resources for Students
- How to take a Canvas Quiz
- How to take a Canvas Quiz where I can only view one question at a time
- How to create PDF of hand written work using a smart phone/device for a File Upload type question
- How to use the Math Equation Editor on an Essay type question (instructions are geared towards instructors, but information is the same for students)
- How to take a LockDown Browser Enabled Quiz (includes information on installing LockDown Browser)
- How to submit a Canvas Quiz
Assignments
1. Creating and Setting Up Canvas Assignments
Use the Hidden Files folder in your course site's Files area to store content used on your graded assessments. The Hidden Files folder will hide the content from students when they go to the Files area, but will be viewable to them when you link to the file in your Quiz Question or Assignment.
2. Advanced Assignment Features
3. Assignment Scheduling and Student Accommodations
Due dates you set will be in Eastern Standard Time (EST). If you have remote students in other time zones, they can modify their personal time zone settings in Canvas so that due dates appear in their local time.
If / when setting a different schedule for a student(s), make sure that you check with them to ensure that the date / time you select does not conflict with other course work or obligations.
Students are able to submit and resubmit as many times as they want up until the Assignment's "Until" date. For this reason, you should not have to add an extra attempt for a student.
If a student was unable to submit their file before the "Until" date, you can use the information on "How do I assign an assignment to an individual student?" to set up an extension for the student.
4. Viewing Student Assignment Submissions
If you want to re-upload versions of student submissions with your comments, you will need to make sure that the file names of your graded versions EXACTLY match the file names of the originally download versions.
The file name is how Canvas knows which files should be distributed to which student.
5. Grading Canvas Assignments
6. Canvas Assignment Resources for Students
- How do I upload a file as an assignment submission?
- How to create PDF of hand written work using a smart phone/device for a File Upload Assignment
- How do I view assignment comments from my instructor?
- How do I view annotation feedback comments from my instructor directly in my assignment submission?
For more help, please contact [email protected].