16 Digital Learning Center Exam Commons User Guide

Creating a Canvas Quiz

Canvas Quizzes are an intuitive and user-friendly choice for online testing. Here’s how to get started and create your quiz:

1. Go to your Canvas course.
2. Click “Quizzes” on the left side. This link will be grayed out if there is nothing published here.
3. Click the red “+ Quiz” button in the upper right.
4. Change the quiz title and click “Save” at the bottom to set up the framework of your quiz.

 

Note: You may work on creating your quizzes after you submit your exams, and you may continue to adjust your quizzes up until the start of testing. The main thing is that your quiz must be ready and published by the first day of testing.

Create a Question

When you’re ready to create a question, click back on the title of your quiz. To start:

1. Click “Edit” in the upper right.
2. Click the “Questions” tab to the right of “Details.”
3. Click “+ New Question”
4. Select the question type you wish to create from the drop-down question type menu.
5. Type or copy and paste your question into the question field. You can also embed an image into the question that’s in your Canvas account, on Flickr, or on the internet. To do this, click “Embed Image” to bring up an image source page.Click the red “Update” button when you’re done.
6. Enter the correct answer in the “Correct Answer” field, and then enter other possible answers below. If you have created a multiple choice question, you may remove or add additional answers as needed. If you wish, you may also set images as correct answers instead of text (follow the same embed image instructions listed in step 5).
7. When you’re done creating your question, click “Update Question” to save your work.
8. Click the red “Save” button at the bottom when you’re done adding questions.

 

Note: You can change the answer positions by mousing over a possible answer, hovering over the green arrow, and clicking it. You can select “Shuffle Answers” in the quiz settings (this will be described below in the “Quiz Setting” sections). Use one of these methods to shuffle your answers, otherwise all of your correct answers will be the same answer position as shown.

Linking Digital Materials into Questions

If you would like, you can link digital materials such as PDFs into your quiz instructions and/or specific questions for your students. Examples of these materials include formula sheets, readings, etc. (make sure that you also included these in the “Approved Materials” section of your exam request as well, or if you didn’t contact the Exam Commons to have them added). You can link to documents by following these steps:

1. Go to the Files link on the left side of your Canvas course.
2. If the file you wish to link isn’t already uploaded into your course, click the red “Upload” button and select the file to upload.
3. The file is now in your course files, and can be easily linked to. Go back to Quizzes and click your quiz title.
4. Click “Edit” and then Questions at the top.
5. Go to the question where you would like to insert the document and click the pencil in its upper right hand corner to edit.
6. Select the words in your sentence that you would like to hyperlink to the file, or select the entire quiz question.
7. Mouse to your right and click “Files,” and then click on the file that you would like to link to.
8. This will turn the hyperlinked text yellow for a couple of seconds, and then when you hover over the text you can see that it’s linked.
9. Make sure to hit “Update Question” and then “Save” at the bottom when you’re done.

 

Question Banks

As you create questions, Canvas will automatically put them into a course-wide question bank titled “Unfiled Questions.” I recommend organizing your questions into the proper banks from the start, rather than having to go back and separate questions out when you’re done (this also allows you to easily pull them into randomized question groups in the next step). So, before you begin creating too many questions, plan out how you would like to organize similar content areas into banks. To manage your question banks, do this:

 

1. Go to the “Questions” tab of your quiz and click “Find Questions”
2. Click “View Course Question Banks”
3. Here you can create a new question bank by clicking “Add Question Bank” on the top right hand corner.
4. Click any of the created Question Banks to edit or manage their content or “Unfiled Questions” to manage all questions for the course.
5. On the right side, you’ll see several options.

 

• “Edit Bank Details” will let you rename your bank
• “Add a Question” will let you create questions directly in the bank so that they’re in the right place from the time they’re created
• “Move Multiple Questions” to move them to different banks.

 

Note: If you make an edit to a question that is already on your quiz it will update on the quiz, but the question will NOT update in the bank. Also, a question that is updated in the unfiled question bank will NOT update on the quiz, unless questions are being pulled from a question group (see below).

Question Groups

Once your question banks are set up, here is how you can set up question groups that select randomized questions for students:

1. Go to the “Questions” tab of your quiz and click “New Question Group”
2. Type in a group name, such as “Multiple Choice Questions,” and click “Link to a Question Bank”
3. Click the question bank that you would like questions to be pulled from and click “Select Bank”
4. Fill out the “Pick x questions, x pts per question” section with how many questions you would like to be picked and their point value.
5. Click “Create Group”
6. Information about the group will display, and you will now be able to access a link to the question bank that is being pulled from for the group in the description.

 

Preview Your Quiz

It’s easy to preview your quiz in Canvas to make sure you’re on the right track. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go back to the Quizzes link on the left side and click on your quiz title
2. This will pull up a settings summary page, and will have a red “Preview” button at the bottom.
3. Click “Preview.”

Quiz Settings

Canvas defaults to some of the settings that you need for your quiz, but there are others that need to be adjusted. To change your settings, go back to the Quizzes link on the left side and click on your quiz title. Click edit. There are three main settings sections here:

Quiz Instructions

This section has the quiz instructions, quiz type, and assignment group.

• Include in the instructions any information about the quiz that the students will need. This is also a good place to insert links for digital materials that students will need to access during testing (e.g. formula sheets, readings, etc. – make sure to include this in the “Approved Materials” section of your exam request as well). This process is detailed above in the “Linking Digital Materials” section.
• Make sure to leave the quiz on the default for quiz type, “Graded Quiz” so that it is recorded in the gradebook as such.
• You can also leave the default setting for “Assignment Group”

Quiz Options

There are a few important settings in this section. Here’s a walk-through of what each setting does:

• Shuffle Answers – This option shuffles all possible answers in displayed questions. It does not randomize the questions themselves, though; randomization must be set up manually through question groups and banks.
• Time Limit – The maximum amount of time for exams in the Exam Commons is 120 minutes. Make sure that the amount of time you enter here matches the amount of time on your exam request.
• Allow Multiple Attempts – This setting pulls up a larger menu when you click it, including selections for which quiz score to keep and for how many attempts are allowed. Make sure that your number of attempts also matches the number of attempts you listed on DLC-Reserve. The number of attempts on the DLC-Reserve site dictates the number of attempts students can sign-up for.
  • Note: Canvas does not currently have a way to only allow one attempt per day, so occasionally students with multiple attempt quizzes will accidentally start their next attempt after completing one.
    • If this happens, the Exam Commons will provide the student with an additional attempt and notify the instructor.
    • Instructors can also add extra attempts for students, and that tutorial will be provided later in this guide.
• Let Students See Their Quiz Responses – This is automatically selected, as well as “Let Students See The Correct Answers.” If you leave this setting as is, students will be able to see which questions they got right and wrong, and the correct answers (and even at home!). Most instructors do not want to reveal this much exam information, so there are a couple of ways to tighten the restrictions here.
  • Selecting “Only Once After Each Attempt” allows students to only see their responses once (and also the correct answers, if you have that selected too). Canvas forces students to view these responses at the end of testing, so they would be required to “use their view” in the Exam Commons. This is the most secure way to allow students to view their results.
  • You can also set correct answers to be shown later in the semester after everyone has completed the exam. However, if you have this set, be aware that students would be able to access the results from home during this time frame (future results viewing cannot be set in combination with “Only Once After Each Attempt”).
• Show one question at a time – This is completely up to the preference of you and your students. I often will see this setting deselected, as it seems that many students like to be able to scroll up and down through all questions during testing and instructors understand this.

 

Quiz Restrictions

This last section is where you set how and when your students can access your quiz.

• Require an access code – This is where you would set a password for a proctor. Passwords are not used for security in the Exam Commons, so you can leave this field blank for Exam Commons only testing. If some students are testing locally and some are distance students testing with a proctor, you will want to create a copy of this exam and change this setting. Details will be given about this in the “Copy a Quiz” section below.
• Filter IP Addresses – The Exam Commons uses IP filtering for security. “UNL Testing Centers” is the name of the IP group, and this includes IPs in the DLC Exam Commons as well as the SSD Testing Center. It’s extremely important that you make this selection before publishing your quiz, so that your students cannot access it from home. Here’s how to set up IP filters:

If IP filters are set and a student tries to access a quiz from home, they will receive an error message saying that they cannot access the quiz from their current location. Example:

• Assign – This section lets you assign the quiz to all or certain students. It’s also important to set the Due, Available from, and Until dates and times so that this quiz appears on your students’ Canvas calendars. Quizzes should span only entire days of testing (not partial days), and you can access the Exam Commons’ hours of operation here so you know which times your quizzes should start and end:
  • https://dlc-reserve.unl.edu/Home/HoursAndLocation

Hiding Quiz Scores from Students

In the above section, we discussed hiding quiz responses and correct answers from students. To hide grades, follow these steps

1. Click on the quiz that you would like hide grades for
2. Click SpeedGrader™ in the right menu
3. Hover over the eye icon on the left top bar. This button allows you to post or hide grades.
4. Clicking hide grades will display this dialogue:
5. Click “Hide”

 

If you go to the “Grades” section of your Canvas course, you will now see a crossed out eye in the assignment’s column. You may post grades at any time.

Note: You will only be able to use the SpeedGrader™ to hide grades for a quiz after it has been published.

 

Publish a Quiz

Before you publish a quiz, make sure that you have set IP restrictions. This is a very important step, since students could access quizzes at home if a quiz was published without IP restrictions set. When you’re ready to publish, all you have to do is hover over the crossed circle on the right side of the quiz in Quizzes, and click publish.

This will turn to a green circle with a check, and students will be able to see the link as soon as you hit publish.

 

Using Announcements to Link to a Quiz

After a quiz is created, you can insert a link to the quiz using the Rich Content Editor. A course announcement with a quiz link is an easy way to help direct students to the test they need to take. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Select Announcements in the course menu
2. Click on “+ Announcement”
3. Create the text for the announcement and highlight the word or phrase that you want to link to the exam
4. Click on the Links tab on the right and expand the Quizzes menu
5. Select the Quiz you want to link to
6. The text will flash yellow and then change to red, indicating that it is now hyperlinked.
7. Click “Save” at the bottom.

 

Copy a Quiz for a Remote Proctor

If some of your students will test at the Exam Commons and some will test off-campus, you will need to create a copy of the quiz and adjust the settings for remote testing. Naturally, you will want to wait to do this until you’re done fine-tuning your quiz. Here’s how to do this:

1. Go to the “Settings” link on the left-hand side of your course
2. Click “Import Course Content” in the menu on the right
3. Click the “Content Type” drop-down menu and click “Copy a Canvas Course”
4. Type the name of your course (i.e. AHIS101) into the search for a course field, and then click your current section
5. Click “Select specific content” button in the “Content” section
6. Click “Import”
7. In the “Current Jobs” list, click the red “Select Content” button
8. Click the right arrow next to “Quizzes,” and click the checkbox next to the quiz you wish to copy
9. Click “Select Content”

After this, the quiz will briefly display as “Queued” in the Current Jobs list, and then it will say “Completed” after it’s finished being copied.  Now, you can adjust the settings on the quiz copy for your distance students. Here are those instructions:

• Navigate back to your Quizzes folder to find a copy with the same title
• Click the copied quiz and click edit
• 
• Change the title to something that makes this recognizable as the distance version, such as “Quiz 1 Distance”
• Deselect “Filter IP Addresses”
• Check “Require an access code” to create a password (remember that this password must be communicated to your distance proctors!)
• 
• This step is optional, but if you want you can assign this version of the test to certain students so that only your distance students see this version of the exam. However, this isn’t truly necessary because only one version of the exam will work depending on where a student is taking it from.
• Hit “Save” when you’re done.
• You may also want to change the title of the other exam to something that makes it recognizable as the local version to be taken at UNL.

Remember, you do not need to make a copy for students using the SSD Testing Center. The “UNL Testing Centers” filter includes IP addresses at both the DLC and SSD testing centers.

 

Adding Extra Time for Students with Accommodations

If you have a student who is registered with the SSD office as having an additional time accommodation, you must pre-set their extra time in Canvas. If you are using Mobius Assessment for your exams the extra time will be added on site by staff in the DLC or SSD testing centers, but it must be added in advance for Canvas quizzes. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to your Canvas course.
2. Click the title of the exam which you would like to extend time for a particular student
3. Click “Moderate this Quiz” in the upper-right hand corner
4. This will take you to a screen with a list of your students, and you can click the edit icon to the right of the student to whom you would like to give extra time.
5. On the dialog that pops up, just type in the amount of extra time they should receive for every attempt, and hit save.

Note: This will need to be done for every individual quiz or exam that this student will be taking, and cannot be applied globally to a student’s account.

 

Giving a Student an Additional Attempt

Additional attempts may be added in the same “Moderate This Quiz” section where extra time is added (see the previous section). Situations where an extra attempt may be needed could include if a student encountered unexpected technical difficulties on their first exam attempt, or if a student taking a multiple attempt quiz accidentally click on and began their next attempt immediately after the first.

Extending Exams for Some or All Students

For Some Students

• Schedule a makeup request on http://dlc-reserve.unl.edu
• Extend the quiz dates through the last day of the makeup request in Canvas so that it’s available when the student(s) come in to test
• If the student has already used their attempt and will be getting a “redo,” add an additional attempt for them in the “Moderate This Quiz” section of Canvas
• If the student has not used their attempt (this is more common, as makeups are typically requested for students who have had trouble finding a time to come to the Exam Commons and test), no further action is required.

For All Students

• Contact the Exam Commons Manager to add additional days to your original exam request
• As soon as this is done, students will be able to see and sign up for times on the newly added days
• Extend the quiz dates through the last day of testing in Canvas so that it’s available when the students come in to test

Quiz Statistics

After students have started taking your quiz, a new link option will appear. You will now be able to access detailed Quiz Statistics about your quiz! To see this, follow these steps:

1. Click on your quiz title in Quizzes
2. In the “Related Items” menu on the right, click “Quiz Statistics”
3. This will show a summary page that includes the average, high, and low scores, standard deviation and average time of your exam. You can also download Student Analysis and Item Analysis documents, filter by section, and see a thorough question breakdown when you scroll down past the score graph.

Note: Not only can this information be used for improving your quiz questions, but you can also use the average testing time data to consider adjusting your testing time. For example, on multiple choice exams many students have very short average testing time spans compared to the maximum allowed time. Shortening this time helps the Exam Commons to maximize scheduling within its space, allowing more instructors the chance to schedule online exams in the facility.

MOBIUS ASSESSMENTS

For More InformatioN

Please visit the following link for more information about creating Mobius Assessments:

http://scimath.unl.edu/wba/instructorresources_home.php