Assessment

Q. Is it possible to use Canvas for formative assessment of students? 

A. Yes. According to University policy, Canvas may be used for formative assessment only (Inspera is the University-wide tool for summative assessment).
Assessment types in Canvas include assignments, quizzes and discussions.


If you want to be sure that any marks are not included in Gradebook calculations, then tick the box 'Do not count this assignment towards the final grade'.

Note: Canvas is not intended to be used for summative assessment of students. Use Inspera for that purpose.

Q. How do I find the Turnitin option when creating an assignment?

A. You need to do two things:

  1. Ensure that the Display grade as option is not set to Not graded – use Complete/incomplete instead.
  2. Set the Submission type to File uploads. Then the Plagiarism review option will appear and allow you to select Turnitin.

Refer to our page on Creating assignments.

Q. When creating an assignment, what is the difference between due dates and availability dates?

A. In addition to setting a due date for an assignment, teachers can specify a specific date range when students can submit the assignment. These dates are called availability dates. These dates are optional and can be set depending how you want to manage the assignment. It's a good idea to set the 'Until' date, since this will allow a 'grace period' to accept late submissions, without you having to change the due date for specific students.

  • The due date is the date and time when the assignment is due. Student assignments submitted after the due date (but before the 'Until' date) will be marked as late in the Gradebook. 
  • Setting availability dates allows you to create a date range for students to view and submit the assignment before the due date; or to submit during the grace period after the due date.

Sample availability dates, set when creating the assignment:

assignment_set dates.jpg

  • Student view: in the Modules list and the To-do list, students see only the due date. But when they click on the assignment itself (ready to submit), it shows all the dates, including the final 'Until' date:

Refer to the Canvas guide: Due dates and availability dates Links to an external site..

Q. Will I be able to create a quiz for my students to take to support their ongoing learning?

A. Yes, there is a Quiz tool in Canvas that is viewed as an ‘assignment’ and can be embedded into an assignment. It has features such as being able to provide one stimulus (e.g. a video or image) and posing multiple short questions about that stimulus, with suitable feedback to the student.

Refer to the Canvas guide: How to use the Quiz tool Links to an external site.

Q. How do you tell the difference between Quizzes and New Quizzes?

A. There is a new quiz tool (under development, but available now), called New Quizzes. You need to enable the New Quizzes tool in your Canvas course, and when creating a new quiz, you will be prompted to choose been Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes. These two types of quizzes appear with different icons – a clear rocket icon for the former and a black rocket icon for the latter:

Refer to our page About New Quizzes.

Q. Can I customise the marking (grading) scales? For example, we don’t always mark everything out of 100.

A. Yes, you can create your own marking scales (known in Canvas as 'grading schemes').

Refer to the Canvas guide: How to use grading schemes in a course Links to an external site..

Q. To what extent can you track the marks obtained by students on various types of assessments?

A. Canvas offers detailed analytics displays and reports, as well as a Gradebook into which markers can insert marks and feedback to students. This provides a full record of all assessments in the course and marks earned. (Note that we are unable to remove '0 points' appearing in survey questions as it is embedded in the Canvas software).

Refer to the Canvas guides:

Q. How can you track which students have submitted to an anonymous assignment?

A. The Canvas Assignments tool offers the option for anonymous grading, which means that markers cannot see student names when marking the assignment using SpeedGrader. However, sometimes the teacher or course administrator might wish to see which students have not yet submitted to the assignment. There are two methods for temporarily viewing which students have submitted an assignment that has been marked:

  1. Before the deadline (or posting of grades), go to the specific assignment, click Edit and uncheck the 'anonymous grading" option. 
    • CAUTION: Markers will be able see students' names during the time that anonymous grading has been disabled (so you need to recheck the option as soon as possible).
  2. In the Grades tool, you can Post grades Links to an external site. to students, which will automatically remove anonymity, i.e. you are able to see who submitted and who did not, as well as their grade.
    • CAUTION: This method will automatically send an email to all students that the grades have been posted.

Use the first method (briefly) if you would like to see who has submitted their assignment before the deadline (and who has not).

Q. Is it possible to send a reminder to students who have not yet submitted their assignment?

A. Yes, this can be done via the Grades tool within the Canvas course. Click the three-dot menu alongside the assignment title, then the option Message students who...

You can then elect to send a message to students who haven't submitted yet; haven't been graded yet; or have scored more/less than a certain grade.

messages_students_who.jpg

Refer to the Canvas guide: How to send messages to students via the Grades tool Links to an external site.

Note: The option to Message students who... is not available for an anonymously graded assignment. Therefore, in order to make use of the feature, you would need to edit the assignment and temporarily disable anonymous grading (see question and answer above this one).

Q. Why has the quiz that I copied and edited since been overwritten by the original one?

A. This is expected behaviour in Canvas. If you copy the same quiz/assignment multiple times into the same course (or a different course), either using Copy To or Import Course Content, each copy will just overwrite the first copy. See the last bullet point in blue in this Canvas guide on copying assignments. Links to an external site.

So, for example:

  1. I create a quiz, Quiz A
  2. I want to make a modified version of that quiz, so I copy it (into the source course) to create a duplicate, Quiz B, which I then edit.
  3. I want another different version, so I copy Quiz A again, expecting to get Quiz C. What actually happens is that Quiz B gets overwritten and my edits are lost.

This would also happen if I were to copy Quiz A twice into a different course – I would end up with a single copy in the destination course, and any edits I had made to the first copy would be overwritten by the second copy.

We recommend instead that for quizzes, use the Question Bank feature (at the account level) as a central repository for all your quiz questions, which you can then re-use in multiple different quizzes. Once you have built your question bank, you can select specific questions or choose a random selection from the bank to vary questions in each new quiz that you create. 

Refer to the Canvas guide: How do I create a question bank? Links to an external site.