Setting up a practice quiz

[Start transcript]

TEXT ON SCREEN: Setting up a practice quiz

[Voice over Nicky Callinan]

VISUAL: Screencast of a quiz in Canvas

In this video we’ll show you how to set up a practice quiz. We will also show you how to set up 6     of the most common question types in a Canvas quiz for a VE course. These will be:

• Multiple choice
  
• True & False
  
• Fill in the multiple blanks
  
• Matching
  
• File upload question. 
  

Setting up a practice quiz is a great way for students to apply their knowledge in preparation for an assessment. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Getting started

VISUAL: Screencast of a quiz being created from within a module in Canvas.

To get started, create a new quiz by selecting the plus symbol at the top right-hand side of the module you’d like it to go in. 

Select quiz and new quiz.

Give the quiz a name. We suggest in the name that you include the week or module number, followed by the word ‘quiz’ then the name of the learning activity. Having an easy naming convention to follow will help with the organisation of your course and will help students to find what they need more easily. Once you’ve given it a name, select ‘add item’.

VISUAL: Screencast of two assignment groups being set up within Canvas

If you haven’t up assignment groups already, go to ‘Assignments’ and create two groups. Make one group for your ‘learning activities’, where you’ll keep any practices quizzes or activities that won’t go against the student’s final grade.

Then create a second group called ‘Assessment task’ where all of the quizzes or assessments that make up the student’s final grade will go.

VISUAL: Screencast of the ‘Structuring your course and content’ guideline web pages.

For more information on how to structure your course please take a look at our course structuring  guidelines which can be found on the flexible delivery of ve program pages. You can find a link to this below

VISUAL: Screencast of the Assignment quizzes group in Canvas

Select the quiz you’ve just created and select edit.

In this section write the instruction for your quiz.  Make sure you provide a clear overview of the task and its purpose. Include information on how this learning activity is important or useful for the student to complete. If you’re using the VE essentials single unit of competency, the correct settings will already be set, so you won’t need to adjust anything. 

Again, for more information on how to write these instructions, check out the course structuring guidelines in the link provided below.

You should also notify the student in these instructions that the quiz is not a graded assignment and it won’t form part of their overall assessment. 

For quiz type, make this a graded quiz.  - This is setting is important. By doing this, it means that Evidence of Participation or EoP can be recorded automatically in Canvas.  

In the assignment group select the group that is non-assessed.  

Select ‘yes’ to shuffle the answers

Don’t select a time limit.

Select ‘yes’ to multiple attempts and quiz score to keep ‘highest’

Make the number of attempts to be ‘2’

Check this option to let students to see their quiz responses and check the option to let students see the correct answers. 

You can choose to show one question at a time. This setting is generally set to ‘yes’.

Require Respond us LockDown is set to ‘no’

Required to view quiz result is set to ‘no’

And you can choose if webcam is required or not, but this is generally set to ‘no’.

In this section assign to everyone, and you will need to include the date that the student needs to complete this quiz by. 

Then select ‘save’

To start adding your questions for the quiz, select ‘edit’ again, and select the ‘questions’ tab at the top. 

Then select new question. If it’s the first question, call it question 1. For each question you will need to change the points to zero. This step is important. With a formative or practice quiz you want to set all of the question points to zero, so it doesn’t make up part of the students final grade. 

In this dropdown, you can choose the question type.

We’ll now look at how to set up some of the different question types in a quiz.

TEXT ON SCREEN: Multiple choice

VISUAL: Screencast of a multiple choice question being set up in Canvas. 

This option allows students to select one correct answer from a range of options. 

Type your question here. If you are copying and pasting from a word doc, make sure you right click and ‘paste as plain text’ so you don’t carry over any unwanted formatting for Word. 

In the boxes below type in the wrong answers. If you want to add some more options, click the ‘add another answer option’. If you want to delete any of the options, select the rubbish bin icon. And if you want to change the correct answer to one fo the other options, you can do this by selecting this green arrow. 

In a practice quiz you need to provide feedback if the student gets the answer wrong. To do this, select the green box for the correct answer. Here you can type something like ‘correct’ or ‘well done’ to let the student know they’re right. 

In the incorrect answers, select the red box and type your feedback.

TEXT ON SCREEN: True & False option

VISUAL: Screencast of a true and false question being set up in Canvas.

This is similar to set up as the multiple-choice option. Type your question or statement here. Then select the green arrow against the correct option if it's true or false. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Multiple dropdown

VISUAL: Screencast of a multiple dropdown question being set up in Canvas.

This one is a little bit trickier to set up. Let’s use the example that has been provided. 

Type in the question area,

Roses are

‘open square bracket’ 

‘colour 1’ 

‘close square bracket’, 

violets are ‘open square bracket’ 

‘colour 2’ 

‘close square bracket’.

Now if you look at the dropdown options next to ‘show possible answer’, you can see that this has the options ‘colour 1’ and ‘colour 2’.

So when you place square brackets around a word in this area, it’s going to become an option in this dropdown.

 Let’s set the correct option for ‘colour 1’. This is going to be ‘red’ so we’ll type that here. When this is green it means this answer is going to be correct.

Now in this dropdown, we need to swap it to ‘colour 2’. The correct answer for this is going to be ‘blue’ which we’ll type here. 

Here you can add some additional incorrect answers to make it a bit more challenging. 

When you have square brackets around a word, this will show up as an option in this dropdown. For the student it will show up as blank drop down where they need to select the correct word.

Let’s select ‘update question’ and have a look at what the student will see. Select ‘save’. 

Select preview.

It’s good practice to go through the quiz as if you’re a student to make sure it’s been set up correctly. 

Here is the multiple dropdown question.  You can see the statement, and the student needs to choose the right words from the dropdown. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: Matching

VISUAL: Screencast of a matching question being set up in Canvas.

In this question type, students need to match the pairs. In the question section include the instruction for the student. 

And then in the two columns, type the matching answers side by side. 

Delete any unwanted rows. 

Don’t forget to set the points to zero. 

In this section you can type a couple of distractors.

Here you can type the feedback. 

TEXT ON SCREEN: File upload question

VISUAL: Screencast of a file upload question being set up in Canvas.

This is an option you might want to include if a student needs to upload a file such as s drawing to answer a question. You just need to include clear instructions for the student here. 

In preview mode, you’ll see that it gives the student option to upload a file for the teacher to assess

TEXT ON SCREEN: Essay question

VISUAL: Screencast of an essay question being set up in Canvas.

One last question type that is often used is the essay question. This option is good if you want the student to provide a long response to a question. It also saves you and the student time from having to download and reupload a word document.

This one is very easy to set up. All you need to do is provide clear instruction for the student in this section here. 

Don’t forget to set points to zero. 

Hit save. 

When we preview this, you’ll see the instruction for the student here, and they can provide their long response in this section here.

TEXT ON SCREEN: Contact us at VEDT@rmit.edu.au

That concludes our video on how to use collaboration tools within Canvas. We hope you’ve found it useful! If you have any questions or wish to give some feedback, you can send us a message at VEDT@rmit.edu.au