New Quizzes is a new, optional version of the Canvas Quiz tool that offers additional features. When creating a quiz, you will be presented with the option to select Classic Quizzes or New Quizzes. This page provides a comparison between the two versions, particularly things to be aware of that are not yet available in New Quizzes.

Notes:

New Quizzes is still under development. Although it offers some new functionality, it does not yet match all the existing functionality offered by Classic Quizzes. Therefore careful consideration is required before you embark on using New Quizzes.
If you need to use any of the new question types that are only supported by New Quizzes use that, but be aware of the caveats described in the following sections.
If in doubt as to which quiz tool to use, then use Classic Quizzes. Reason: you can easily migrate a Classic Quiz into the New Quizzes tool, but not the other way around.
New Quizzes is planned to be the quiz tool of the future, as it is where development is being focused, but at least starting out in Classic Quizzes leaves your options open (for now).

Index

Feature comparison
Reports for item analysis
Rich content editor
Text-only items
SpeedGrader
Survey-type questions
Quiz components shared (or not) between courses
Further resources

1. Feature comparison

Which Quiz tool should I use?

See this feature comparison between the two tools: Classic Quizzes vs new Quizzes. Some of the more frequently used aspects (that are different – or lacking in New Quizzes) are described in the following sections.

2. Reports for item analysis

There is no .csv download of students’ individual responses to analyse offline (e.g. to conduct item analysis). You can see this information in the browser (Quizzes > Reports), but it is not downloadable.

3. Rich content editor

Some expected features in the rich content editor are present, for example, using the HTML editor; accessibility checker; recording and uploading audio and video clips. Recently added features include the mathematics equation editor, and word count (displayed below the editing box).

Some features in the rich content editor are still missing, for example, inserting content via plug-in tools (such as Panopto). This is being worked on by the Canvas suppliers.

See the suppliers' feature comparison table (pg 3) for more details: Classic Quizzes vs new Quizzes.

4. Text-only items

In Classic Quizzes, you can use a text (no question) item as a preface to a quiz or a group of questions within a quiz.

In New Quizzes, the only option to provide text-based information is as part of a stimulus question, which always gives a side-by-side view of the stimulus information, with an associated question.

Here is an example of a stimulus question in New Quizzes (with a follow-up question based on the same stimulus):

map showing Oxford colleges

5. SpeedGrader

SpeedGrader may be used to mark essay-type questions, but it is rather difficult to find. There are two ways of invoking SpeedGrader:

On the Home page of your course, you should see a reminder to grade quiz questions when new submissions have been made:

Clicking on the quiz title will open SpeedGrader if there are questions that require manual marking.

Go to the Grades tool (Gradebook) and find the column for the quiz in question. Click on the small arrow alongside the score for the particular student. This will open a side pane with a link to SpeedGrader:

SpeedGrader doesn’t open in a new window, so it’s best to right click when invoking it, in order to open it in a new tab, otherwise it’s difficult to get back to your Canvas course.

Once you have assigned a mark to the essay question, scroll down and click Update. This mark will then be added into the score of the auto-graded questions, giving the total mark for this student in the quiz, which will be visible in the respective column in the Gradebook.

6. Survey-type questions

Classic Quizzes offers a 'survey' question type: How do I create a survey using (Classic) Quizzes? (even though it carries '0 points' – which is not ideal for a survey).

The Jisc Online Surveys tool is recommended instead, if you need to gather data, for example, via student feedback surveys. Please see our guidance: Embedding a Jisc Online Survey in Canvas.

Microsoft Forms is another way to create surveys (it is simpler, but offers less functionality than JISC surveys). See the guidance from IT Services: Using Microsoft Forms.

7. Quiz components shared (or not) between courses

For quizzes themselves, the settings/responses (as opposed to the questions) are specific to each instance of each quiz, i.e. nothing is shared between quizzes/courses. Therefore, you can edit the settings without causing any problems or affecting versions of the quiz in previous courses. The responses to a quiz will be only from the students in that particular course.

For the questions, it differs between 'Classic' quizzes (i.e. those with the unfilled rocket icon) and 'New' quizzes (i.e. those with the filled rocket icon) as to whether questions are shared between quizzes/courses:

Classic quizzes: each instance of a question is unique, they are never shared between quizzes/courses. Even if questions have been added to a Question Bank*, adding them to a quiz simply creates an independent copy of the question, so each instance of a question would need to be updated separately, when required.
New quizzes:
- Questions not added to an Item Bank* are unique to the quiz that contains them (just like in Classic quizzes). Therefore, copying a quiz with non-banked questions will create new instances of those questions.
- Once a question has been added to an Item Bank, copying a quiz containing it will not create a new question, but will refer to the banked question. Banked questions can only be edited in the bank and such edits will affect all quizzes using that question. Where students have already attempted that question, those attempts will still show the old question, but any new attempts will use the new question.

*Classic Quizzes use the term 'Question Banks', whereas New Quizzes use the term 'Item Banks'.

8.. Further resources

Guidance page (Oxford): How to use New Quizzes

Video for Instructors: Canvas New Quizzes

Document and discussion: What is New Quizzes?