New Quizzes has several new features in January: student analysis reports, conversion of unlinked question banks during course copy, automatic reduction of distractors in multiple choice questions, etc.
Update: we decided not to enabled Discussion Checkpoints this month, because the new feature has undesirable side effects in SpeedGrader, most notably causing SpeedGrader to load the entire discussion instead of selecting the posts from the current student. We will monitor future releases, and we hope that the interaction between the Checkpoints feature & SpeedGrader is improved soon. We plan to enable the new Discussion Checkpoints feature option Tuesday, January 21, 2025. With Discussion Checkpoints, teachers can check an “Assign graded checkpoints” box after checking the “Graded” box in a discussion’s options. Discussion Checkpoints let teachers give different amounts of points and different due dates for students’ initial replies to the topic and for additional replies (to one another). This feature is long-awaited, and we hope that it helps teachers clarify the requirements for two-phase discussion assignments.
After the Saturday, January, 18, 2025 release, teachers will be able to run Student Analysis Reports for New Quizzes to download all responses from students’ most recent attempts in one CSV spreadsheet (another long-awaited feature). Additionally, a new “Convert content to New Quizzes” checkbox in the course import tool allows teachers to migrate both quizzes and questions banks (previously excluded when not linked in any quiz) from the Classic Quizzes engine to the New Quizzes engine.
After the Wednesday, January 15, 2025 code deploy, teachers will have new features in New Quizzes. (1) Teachers may enable a “Reduce answer choices” toggle for specific students in a New Quiz’s Moderate tab to remove one incorrect answer (i.e. distractor) from multiple choice questions with 4+ answers. This feature is intended to support quiz accessibility and inclusivity. (2) Teachers can use SIS ID (i.e. OPUS Student ID) or numeric Canvas ID as a search term in a New Quiz’s Moderate tab. (3) Teachers can adjust the default text font and size on a New Quiz’s Settings tab.
Click here for the list of Canvas release notes. The full notes contain more details, links to screencasts, and feature Q&A discussions. You may log in to the Canvas Community to post.
Header photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash