Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas has allowed instructors to give students multiple attempts on quizzes for a while, but they recently modified this feature. Now, Canvas allows instructors to choose whether a student must re-do the entire quiz in subsequent attempts or if they only need to answer questions they had previously gotten wrong. Accessing this feature This feature is already live in Canvas and can be accessed in the settings page for a New Quiz. Toggle “allow multiple attempts” on, then check the box for “Build on last attempt.” When this feature is enabled, students can reattempt questions until they either get it correct or run out of allowed…
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Why Did Some of My Grades Disappear in My Gradebook?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Let’s imagine a scenario. You have an assignment in your course. Most of your students completed it, and you graded their work. One student didn’t complete the assignment, but you agreed to give them an extension. You went into the assignment settings, opened the assignment back up to them, and merrily went on your way – until you later went to grade their work and discovered you could no longer see the submitted work from any of your other students. You checked the gradebook, and sure enough, the grades you’d previously entered were no longer there either. Even though this is a scary scenario, this can…
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How Can I Get a Deleted Item Back in Canvas?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Sometimes you’re working in Canvas, decide to remove an item from your course only to later realize either you did actually want the item in your course or you accidentally deleted the wrong item. Before you panic or start stressing, Canvas does make it easy to restore most items (and it’ll even try to restore the student data)! Go to the Canvas course where you want to restore an item. At the end of the URL, add “/undelete” – it should be right after the course id number. Your URL should look like the following: cedarville.instructure.com/courses/####/undelete. Canvas will take you to a “Restore Deleted Items” page that lists the items you can bring back. Scroll…
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How Can I Send a Piece of Course Content to Another Course or Instructor?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Have you ever been working on a course and realized there was a piece of it that you wanted to use in another of your courses? Or has another instructor asked you for a piece of content and you were left with trying to figure out the best way to get it to them? Canvas has a feature that makes this easy. When you want to transfer a single item (or a few items), you can use the direct share feature to copy or send the item. These two options function a little differently – one sends the item to a user, while the other copies it…
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How Can I Reopen a Quiz for a Student (New Quizzes Makes It Easy!)
Reading Time: < 1 minute As we’re progressing through the semester, you may have a student come to you and ask to be let back into a quiz. Canvas makes it simple to do this, especially in New Quizzes. As a reminder, it’s easy to tell which quizzes are New Quizzes – they have the solid rocket ship icon (not the one that’s just an outline). New Quizzes has a built-in “reopen quiz” feature. With the click of a button, Canvas will allow the student back into their existing attempt. Since this is the existing attempt, students will pick up where they left off. All the questions they’d already answered will still…
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How do I give a student extra time on a quiz or exam?
Reading Time: 2 minutes With the changes of this semester, you may have moved some in-class quizzes or exams into Canvas. And with that change, there’s a feature you’ll need to use – moderating quizzes to give a student extra time for an accommodation. Even though the steps are a little different depending on whether you built your assessment as a Classic Quiz or New Quiz, the basic idea is still the same. You need to update the availability and due dates as well as give the student the extra time. Let’s look at how to do this in each quiz type. Remember: the Classic Quiz icon is just outlined, and…
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Remote Learning: The Basics
Reading Time: 3 minutes You’ve survived the first couple days of teaching remotely because of COVID-19 – congratulations! We’re going to use this post to take a pause and review some of the methods that are most helpful for transitioning online. These are the things that will make your course functional. Your course will survive. And later in this transitioning online series, we’ll be covering items that will slowly take you from surviving to thriving. But for now, we’re starting small. If you haven’t checked out the Getting Started with Remote Learning course in Canvas, please do so. We walk through these tips plus best practices, FAQs, and ways to…
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Canvas New Quizzes and SpeedGrader
Reading Time: 2 minutes Even though it isn’t a feature that’s advertised by Canvas, SpeedGrader can still be accessed and used with New Quizzes – it just takes a couple of extra clicks now. Let me diverge with a brief illustration: Imagine you’re going to pick up a tin of cookies from a friend’s house (you do this regularly). Typically, you would walk up to the front door, and the tin would be right there on a little table waiting for you. But then the process changed. You can still get your cookies; but now you need to walk around the house to the back door, knock three times, whisper…
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New Quizzes vs Classic Quizzes: Who You Gonna Call?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Last time, we talked about how Canvas is updating the location and icon for New Quizzes. If you haven’t reviewed how this change will affect you, please take a moment to go and brush up. We’ll wait for you. Okay? Welcome back. Now that you’re up to speed, we’re going to look at exactly what the differences between New Quizzes and Classic Quizzes are and give some guidelines for how to choose what best suits your needs. If you want to use third-party tools (e.g., Respondus Lockdown Browser) Currently, only Classic Quizzes support third-party tools such as Respondus Lockdown Browser. If using a lockdown browser is…
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Canvas Release Update: New Quizzes Moving to Quizzes Page
Reading Time: 2 minutes Canvas is consistently working on and looking for ways to improve the system. As a part of this, Canvas is in the process of creating a new quiz engine. This quiz engine (hereafter called “New Quizzes”) is currently available in Canvas and has slightly different features and capabilities from the current quiz engine (“Classic Quizzes”). We’ll get into the differences between the two options in a future post. Today, however, we’re going to look at the updates Canvas is making to where New Quizzes are housed and created as well as noting the icon designation changes. These changes will go live in Canvas Saturday, February 15. …