Last updated 10/28/22

What is "New Quizzes"?

As the name implies, New Quizzes is a new quizzing experience in Canvas for instructors and students, offering a few more question types than the "Classic" quiz tool as well as a different management of quiz settings. New Quizzes is not a significant change for students taking a quiz.

New Quizzes is currently in development by Canvas.  It does not yet have some of the features that are in Classic quizzes, and some features are not expected to be ported over into New Quizzes.

See the feature comparison

New Quizzes FAQ

The following are frequently asked questions about New Quizzes.

When is it coming?

Recently, Instructure announced that there is no formal "end of life" for the removal of Classic quizzes from the Canvas toolset.  As such, there is no longer a mandated transition to New Quizzes.  In a sense, New Quizzes is now here and Classic Quizzes is not going away.  Instructure's engineering efforts will be put to use improving New Quizzes though, with all development, improvements, bug fixes, etc. for Classic quizzes having ceased.

What about existing quizzes?

Existing Classic quizzes will continue to be available and functional for the foreseeable future.  There is no "end of life" for existing quizzes.

What new question types are in New Quizzes?

Can students receive special accommodations in New Quizzes?

Yes, additional time and attempts can be configured for students. In fact, the time limit feature is more flexible in New Quizzes than in Classic quizzes. More information.

Can I use Respondus Lockdown Browser/Monitor with New Quizzes?

No, not at this time.  Respondus Lockdown Browser and Respondus Monitor currently only work with Classic quizzes.  There is no published timeline for when Respondus will be able to be used with a New Quizzes activity.

How do I migrate a Classic quiz to New Quizzes?

If an instructor wishes to convert a Classic quiz to a New Quizzes activity, this can be done very easily.  On the Quizzes home page of a course, choose the “Migrate” choice in the 3-dot menu of the quiz. Canvas’s documentation page explains more.

What ‘gotchas’ should I know about?

The development process for New Quizzes is still on-going, so there some holes to be aware of currently: 

  • Matching and Ordering questions cannot yet award partial credit — they are either full credit or zero credit in New Quizzes at the moment. 
  • Questions stored in existing Canvas Question Banks must be migrated separately to the new “Item Banks” feature of New Quizzes. This is an extra step that is done separately from migrating a quiz that might use those questions.  Here’s how.
  • Student quiz result data cannot be downloaded to a CSV file.

Additional Resources

Helpful overview of New Quizzes (From Yale University)

FAQ about New Quizzes (From Instructure)

Feature comparison between Classic and New Quizzes (From Instructure)

Updated: October 28, 2022