Quercus Quizzes

Classic Quizzes

Use Quercus Classic Quizzes to create a variety of question types to test your students’ learning in an exam format. There are also options to create formative and self-assessments by creating practice quizzes and surveys. There are four types of quizzes available in Quercus:

• Graded Quiz: A column is automatically created in the Gradebook for a graded quiz. After a student takes a graded quiz, certain question types will be automatically graded.
• Practice Quiz: Use practice quiz as a learning tool to help students see how well they understand the course material. Students do not receive a grade for practice quizzes, even though the quiz results display the number of points earned in the quiz.
• Graded Survey: A graded survey allows the instructor to give students points for completing the survey, but it does not allow the survey to be graded for right or wrong answers. Graded surveys have the option to be anonymous.
• Ungraded Surveys: An ungraded survey allows you to get opinions or other information from your students, but students do not receive a grade for their responses. Ungraded surveys can be anonymous.

You can view all your quizzes in your course on the Quizzes page. You can also add quizzes and modify quiz settings on the Quizzes page.

In order to create a new Quiz, click the Add Quiz button.

When you create a quiz, you have a variety of options to choose from within a quiz.

In the Details tab, you can use the Rich Content Editor to add instructions for your quiz.  The Office 365 integration displays the OneDrive icon in the Rich Content Editor in Quizzes and allows users to create a hyperlink to OneDrive files directly in the Rich Content Editor. You can also add links, files , and images  to the Quiz instructions using the content selector.

Once you have set up the settings for your quiz, click the Questions tab to create the quiz questions and points. You can create individual quiz questions, or find questions in a question bank. You can also create a question group to randomize quiz questions.

Individual questions can be added to a Question Group. Alternatively, you can link the Question Group to a Question Bank.

You can view student quiz results within each quiz in your course by viewing the quiz results page or moderating the quiz. When moderating the quiz, you can view the progress of student submissions and view the number of quiz attempts each has taken. You can also grant students extra attempts, grant extra time for timed quizzes, and manually unlock quiz attempts.  As a moderator, you cannot remove student submissions.

If you are creating Multiple Choice questions and quizzes, you may find the following CTSI tips sheets helpful: Multiple Choice Question and Quiz Tips  and Multiple Choice Quercus Quiz Analysis Reports.

Note about Quercus (Canvas) System Performance:

For optimum course performance in the Quercus (Canvas) interface, quiz statistics will only generate for quizzes with 100 or fewer unique questions or 1,000 total attempts. For instance, a quiz with 200 questions will not generate quiz statistics. However, a quiz with 75 questions will generate quiz statistics until the quiz has reached 1000 attempts. Results greater than these maximum values can be viewed by downloading the Student Analysis report and viewing the CSV file.

New Quizzes vs. Classic Quizzes

New Quizzes Feature Comparison Chart

Canvas New Quizzes Hub

New Quizzes offers some new features and question types, but does not currently have some of the features of the original Classic Quizzes tool.  We recommend using Classic Quizzes unless a feature you require is only available in New Quizzes.

New Quizzes offers some features that are not available in the Classic Quizzes tool. For example, in New Quizzes, you can:

• set a waiting period between quiz attempts for quizzes with multiple attempts
• Moderate a student’s quiz attempt in New Quizzes
• use new questions types, including:
  • stimulus to associate a group of questions with a block of content, and
  • hotspot to upload images and have students identify a specific area in that image.

Eventually, Instructure will retire the original Canvas Classic Quizzes tool.  At that time, Classic Quizzes will be removed from Quercus and New Quizzes will remain as the only quizzing tool.

Instructors may want to use Classic Quizzes for assessments that require detailed student reports or when copying item banks.

Enabling New Quizzes

To enable New Quizzes in your Quercus course:

1. Click on Settings in the Course Navigation menu

2. On the Feature Options tab, click the New Quizzes slider to ON.

The slider will be green when activated.

Create a New Quizzes Assessment

New Quizzes assessments display a solid icon of a rocket [1] while Classic Quizzes assessments display an outline of a rocket [2].

To create a New Quizzes assessment:

1. 1. In Course Navigation, click the Quizzes link.
   2. Click the Add Quiz button.
      • 
   3. Click New Quizzes, when prompted to select a Quiz engine.
   4. Click Submit.
      • 
   5. Edit Assessment Details,including:
      • Assignment Name
      • Total points possible
      • Assignment Group
      • How grade is displayed to students, by selecting an option from the Display Grade as menu
      • Remove  assessment from final grade calculations, if appropriate, by clicking the Do not count this assignment towards the final grade checkbox
        • 
   6. Assign Assessment:
      •  Use the Assign To feature to select who will be required to take the assessment (can be assigned to Everyone, individual students or sections)
      • Use the Due Date and Time fields to select the assessment due date/time.
      • Use the Available From and Until fields to select the availability dates/times for the assessment.
      • Use the + Assign To button to assign a different due date or availability window to individual students or sections.
        
   7. Click Save to save the assessment details.
      • 

      Note: it is recommended to NOT click Save and Publish until the assessment has been built and its settings defined

   

Features Not Yet Available in New Quizzes

Some features that are available in the Classic Quizzes tool are not currently available in New Quizzes. However, they may be added in the future. The main identified features not yet available in New Quizzes are:

Surveys 

New Quizzes does not have an option to create surveys, either graded and ungraded. However, it is possible to create a New Quizzes assessment with no point value.  See the Canvas guide: Zero Point New Quizzes.

Student analysis report

New Quizzes does not yet provide good enough statistics for individual student record keeping.  Around Q3 2025, Canvas aims to provide access to New Quizzes data in DAP/CD2, enabling customers to analyze quiz performance, student data, and outcomes, just as they currently do with Classic Quizzes.

New Quizzes “Item Bank” vs Classic Quizzes “Question Bank”

The new Item Bank replaces the Question Bank, however the storage of the questions/items also changes. It no longer lives in the course, which affects course copies. Item banks are saved by the user who can share, but it doesn’t get copied into the course, it lives with the user account.

To learn more about New Quizzes and how it compares with the existing  Classic Quizzes tool, please see the following documents:

• FAQ: New Quizzes
• Canvas New Quizzes Feature Comparison (updated 2024)