Quizzes, Tests, and Exams

What quiz question types are available?

Click on the question type below to learn more:

• Multiple Choice
• True/False
• Fill-in-the-Blank
• Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks
• Multiple Answers
• Multiple Dropdown
• Likert scale
• Matching
• Numerical Answer
• Formula
• Simple Formula
• Essay
• File Upload
• Text (no question)

Learn more about Quizzes in Canvas

How do I set up and manage Canvas quizzes for students with accommodations?

When you have student(s) who need accommodations when taking an online exam in Canvas, this section provides instructions on how to provide those accommodations using the Canvas Quiz feature before/during/after exams.

If you are in a situation where you urgently need to give your student extra time/attempt during the exam, please refer to the sections (Classic Quiz) “Giving Students Extra Time,” (Classic Quiz) “Giving Students Extra Attempt(s),” and (New Quizzes) “Giving Students Extra Time/Attempt(s)”.

The default Canvas quiz is called “Classic Quiz”. Unless you have manually enabled “New Quiz”, please follow the instructions on Canvas Classic Quiz.

Canvas Classic Quiz

• Customizing the Exam Available Period
• Giving Students Extra Time
• Giving Students Extra Attempt(s)

Canvas New Quizzes

• Customizing the Exam Available Period
• Setting a Time Limit
• Giving Students Extra Time/Attempt(s)
  • Apply Extra time/attempts for a particular exam
  • Apply extra time for all assessments

Proctored Exam

Canvas Classic Quiz

Once you set up a Canvas “Classic Quiz”, the default settings such as due date, available period, time limits, and number of attempts, apply to all students in the course.

Customizing the Exam Available Period (Classic Quiz)

If you know in advance that the student needs to take the exam at a different time such as on a different day, or during a different time period, and by a different due date, from the rest of the class, you can customize the exam availability period for them in the general Canvas Quiz settings. The steps below show how to make accommodations for the student prior to the exam start date.

First, navigate to Quiz and click “Edit”. Select the student name on the bottom of the page in the “Assign to” list (step 1), and enter the available period for the specific student (step 2).

If there are multiple students who need such accommodations, you can assign more than one student to the same due and availability dates, or start a new “assign to” box for another student who will take the exam during a different time period. 

Once edited, save the Quiz settings. You will view a list of dates and users assigned to the exam. 
Once the exam starts, adjusting the available period in the general Quiz settings will not be applied. If you need to adjust the available period after the exam starts, you will need to go to ‘Moderate this Quiz’ and adjust the settings there. Please refer to the next section on Giving Students Extra Time to learn how.

Giving Students Extra Time (Classic Quiz)

If you need to provide specific student(s) extra time, you must first set a “Time Limit” that will apply to all students. In the general Quiz settings, you will see an option to allow you to enter hours/minutes to “Time Limit”.

Important note:

1. The time limit must be set before students the start the exam. 
2. If you adjust the time limit after students start the exam, the change will not be applied. 
3. If you remove the time limit during the exam, students will still be locked out at the end of the initial set time limit. 

Once the time limit is set, save the quiz settings. Then on the top right of the Canvas Quiz page, you should see “Moderate This Quiz”.

If you do not see the “Moderate This Quiz” option on a Canvas quiz page, check if the quiz is published, as this feature is only visible for published quizzes. Students will not be able to view the published quiz as the Available from and Until dates will restrict student access. 

Under the pencil button next to the student who needs extra time, you can enter the additional time you approved. You can provide a student with extra time either before or during the exam by following the same steps.

Once the exam starts, you can still give a particular student extra time by going to the “Moderate this Quiz” settings. If you give the student extra time during the exam, under the ‘Time’ column you will see the time remaining for that attempt with a clock icon next to it. As long as they take the quiz within the available period, they can use the extra time you give to finish the exam.

If you click on the clock icon, you will see the start and end times of the quiz in Canvas. This is where you can adjust the extra time during a current attempt.

Giving Students Extra Attempt(s) (Classic Quiz)

Giving the student an extra attempt will allow them to retake the exam. With each new attempt, the student will be restarting the exam and their previous answers will not be shown in the new attempt.

To give an extra attempt, go to the “Moderate this Quiz” section on the top right of a Canvas Quiz page, and then click on the pencil icon next to the students’ name.

Enter the number of extra attempts you want to give the student, and then save.

If the “Until Date/Time” of the quiz has expired and you still want to give the student an extra attempt, you will need to select the option to “manually unlock the quiz.” This will override the “Until Date/Time” settings on the general quiz settings page for that particular student.

Students won’t have access to their previous answers. However, as a faculty member, you will be able to see the results for every attempt. You may choose to select the highest score attempted or the score on the final attempt.

Canvas New Quizzes

If you are using the Canvas New Quizzes feature, the set up looks different from the Classic Quiz.

Customizing the Exam Available Period

The instructions to customize the exam’s available period for New Quizzes are the same as those for setting up Classic Quizzes. Please refer to the section of “Customizing the Exam Available period in the Canvas Class Quiz”.

Setting a Time Limit

If you know in advance that a student will need accommodations, you can follow the steps below. You must set a time limit for the quiz if you need to give a student extra time.

To set up a time limit, first go to the “Build” mode of the quiz, and then navigate to the Settings tab, and enter the time limit in the area shown below.

Giving Students Extra Time/Attempt(s) (New Quizzes)

Once the time limit is set, you can make exceptions/accommodations in the “Moderate” tab. You can either give extra time/attempts for a particular exam or for all the exams in the course.

Apply Extra time/attempts for a particular exam (New Quizzes)

Under the “Moderate” tab, you will see a list of your students’ names. 

Click the “Moderate” button found at the very end of the student row.

You can give “Additional Attempts” and/or “Give additional time” here.

Apply extra time for all assessments

You have the option to give extra time to all assessments for a particular student. We do not recommend setting extra time for ALL assessments for a particular student. A student may have specific needs for each exam, longer or shorter, throughout the course. However, if this setting works for your course scenarios, you may follow the steps below.

Under the “Moderate” tab, click on the pencil icon under “Accommodations”. From here, you can give a student extra time and apply the setting to all assessments in the course.

Proctored Exam

If the exam is a proctored exam, you may contact ARC to schedule an in-person proctored exam with the support from the ARC staff. 

If you are using an external proctoring tool, such as Proctorio, you may follow the instructions listed under “Canvas Classic Quiz”, or schedule a consultation with CNDLS at  cndls@georgetown.edu to discuss your plan.

What online quiz and exam security tools are available?

The following tools are available in Canvas to provide secure online quizzes, tests, and exams to students. For more information about the available exam security tools available in Canvas see our Online Quiz and Exam Security Tools page.

Can I preview a quiz to see how students will see it?

Yes, before a quiz is published, you can preview up to 25 quiz questions and answers. After the quiz is published, you can use Student View to view the full quiz.

If you are using Canvas’ New Quizzes feature you can preview the full quiz before publishing. In order to use New Quizzes in your course you will have to first enable it in the Settings –> Feature Options menu.

Can I make changes to quiz questions after students have submitted their answers?

Yes. However, any changes to quiz questions will require the quiz to be regraded. Canvas can only automatically regrade quizzes that have Multiple Choice questions. All other question types will require the instructor to manually regrade the question(s) for each student. What options can I use to regrade a quiz in a course?

What are quiz Question Banks and Question Groups?

Question Banks

A question bank is a repository for questions that can be added to a Canvas quiz or quizzes. With a question bank you can create hundreds of questions around a single topic, or upload hundreds of question per chapter from publisher resources. This provides an opportunity for teachers to select from a wide variety of questions when developing a quiz, developing more than one quiz for a specific assessment strategy and rotate them between terms, or even draw a random set of questions into a quiz using question groups.

Using bookmarked question banks it is even possible to create quizzes in several courses for which the question items are drawn from the same banks.

How do I create a question bank in a course?

Question Groups

Question groups allow you to place multiple questions within a group for students to answer. You can choose the number of questions that should be answered from the group and how many points to assign each question. Creating a question group randomizes questions within a quiz, and all questions in a group come from a question bank. This ability to use question groups, helps improve the security of an online assessment.

How do I create a quiz with a question group linked to a question bank?

How do I share Question Banks with another instructor?

There are a few ways to do this, but one way is to make a quiz in your course that contains all the questions from the question bank. Then export the quiz as a QTI file, share it with the other instructor (via email, for example), and have the other instructor import the QTI file into their own Canvas course.

Alternatively, you can manually enroll an instructor to your course that contains question banks and have them “bookmark” the question bank. This will allow the instructor to access the “bookmarked” question bank in their own Canvas courses.

How do I add an Honor System question to a quiz?

Instructors in Canvas can add the Honor System Pledge as a question to their Canvas quizzes.

1. Access your course in Canvas and click on the Quizzes button on the course menu.
2. a) For an existing quiz: Click on the name of the quiz and then click on Edit.
   b) For a new quiz: Click the +Quiz button.
3. Click the Questions tab.
4. Scroll down on the page and click the Find Questions button.
5. In the Find Quiz Question pop-up box, click on [1] Honor System; [2] click the box next to the Honor System Pledge (Fill in Blank) question; [3] (optional) add the question to an existing or new question group; [4] and then click Add Questions.
   
   
6. (optional) Drag and drop the Honor System Pledge question to the top of the page. You can use the drag and drop option to reorder quiz questions or groups.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save or Save & Publish.

Don’t see what you are looking for?

Check out the Get Help and Training & Support pages for more resources.