Quizzes is used to deliver graded quizzes, practice quizzes, or surveys on course material. As with quizzes in a regular classroom environment, the quizzes in your course space will give you the opportunity to gauge student understanding of course content. You can create quizzes or they can be imported from publisher test banks.

There are eleven question types:

multiple choice
true/false
fill in the blank (Special character types are now accepted)
fill in multiple blanks
multiple answers
multiple dropdowns
likert scale
matching
numerical answer
formula question
essay question
text (no question)

When using the Quizzes tool, there are several variables you can choose from that allow you to create just the type of assessment you want (e.g. timed assessment, single or multiple attempt assessments, and objective assessments that can be automatically graded).

Learn about the four types of Canvas quizzes

There are four types of quizzes available in Canvas. Learn about each type with the resources below:

What are the different types of quizzes?
Comparison: The four types of Canvas quizzes.

Create a new quiz

Follow the steps in this tutorial to create a new quiz in your course:

How do I use the quizzes index page?

The variety of possible quiz settings used to customize the way a quiz is presented to students may be confusing. Use the following tutorials and videos for guidance as you select the appropriate settings for your quiz:

Creating Quizzes

IMPORTANT: Whenever you create or edit questions in a Canvas quiz, it is very important to click the Update Question button for each question before clicking the Save button at the bottom of the page. Clicking save without clicking the update question button will not save your changes to individual questions.

Download this Designing Assessments guide (created in collaboration with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence) to help select the quiz question types most suitable for your needs:

Create and use a question bank

The following tutorials can help you learn the steps for creating and managing your question banks:

How do I create a question bank in my course?
How do I create a quiz by finding questions in a question bank?
How do I create a quiz with a question group linked to a question bank?

Customize quiz availability

If you would like to limit students' access to a quiz in your course, consider the following options:

Publish/Unpublish
- When an item is unpublished in your course, it is completely invisible to students. Publishing is a manual process, and it overrides all other availability settings.

Lock/Unlock
- You can lock a quiz manually by selecting the option to "lock this quiz now" via the quiz settings button, or automatically by date using the availability dates on the quiz settings page. When a quiz is locked using either of these methods, students will not be able to complete the quiz or access the quiz questions, but they will still be able to see the quiz title, description, and due date via the gradebook, calendar, and wherever the quiz appears in your course (e.g. in a course module).

Quiz Considerations

Sometimes students need special accommodations. Look for the "Moderate this Quiz" button as you view quiz details. There you can unlock a quiz for a specific student while it remains locked to others. You can also give students extra quiz attempts and additional time. If a student runs out of time on an attempt (due to technical difficulties) you can actually add more time to that student’s attempt on the spot. Click on the clock to add more.
You can create Surveys (graded or ungraded) that are a quick way to poll students.
You can create a Question Bank to reuse questions or create multiple versions of a quiz. When adding a Question Group, you can set it to select a specific number of questions at random from the bank on the same topic.