[New Quizzes] Practice quizzes

[Estefania]

I  am updating my course for the upcoming academic year and I have stumbled upon a major roadblock regarding quizzes. 

With the Classic Quizzes set to disappear next summer, it doesn't seem worth my while to rely on them, but the New Quizzes are lacking a key feature: PRACTICE QUIZZES. 

The lack of practice quizzes is a major issue for me and other colleagues because, as language teachers, we rely massively on quizzes (especially this year that we are set to be doing a lot of our teaching online). I know that it is possible to set the New Quizzes so that they are worth 0 points and do not count towards the grades, but the fact that they HAVE to be set as an assignment creates a huge problem: without practice quizzes, every single quiz will appear in the syllabus and I would have at least 6 quizzes per week in a 24 week course! This will get very messy, very fast.

I know I can just hide the course summary in the syllabus, but that still would leave us with the problem of students having tens of confusing "assignments" on their calendar (I believe they still would appear under "undated"). Also, I just discovered that hidding the course summary hides the mini calendar and assignment weighting information on the right side of the page too, which renders the syllabus pretty much useless!

Being able to just have the quizzes as practice and add them to the modules where necessary without them being categorised as assignments is the ideal, as it is the case with Classic Quizzes. They may not be as fancy, but they are much more user friendly. 

I cannot understand why the choice was made to remove this essential option - a newer engine should offer the same features as the prior one plus additional ones, not less! I really hope this is something that will be implemented soon. 

Estefanía

[MadisonIngle]

This feature alone makes New Quizzes useless to me.  While I certainly don't want the grades page/gradebook any longer than it needs to be, the confusion on the part of my students' parents would be enormous whenever there are suddenly dozens of items in the gradebook that aren't for a grade.  

[Steven_S]

@MadisonIngle   I wouldn't mind the practice quizzes in the gradebook if they also had a filter in both teacher and student view that would hide everything that does not count towards the grade. But I do not have such a filter, and so practice quizzes in the gradebook equals clutter in my way.

However, having the gradebook's late policy apply to practice quizzes is a bigger problem than clutter in the gradebook.  Students will see that repeating a practice quiz late lowers their score, and so it makes it reduces the perceived re-take value.  I want my students to revisit practice quizzes from the previous 4 modules when they are studying for the exam.  Allowing the gradebook's late policy to apply to the practice quizzes will directly interfere with that.

Most of the other problems I have with new quizzes are only relevant to my practice quizzes: Question groups that randomly assign questions from the group do not yet easily transfer to new quizzes.  Also, matching questions do not also partial credit, and the alternative with fill in the blanks has issues that take time to work through.  So I can't just transfer my matching questions or my question group quizzes; I would have to do too much background work. 

So, my practice quizzes have stayed in classic quizzes, but I have been able to move to new quizzes with my graded quizzes.  The biggest problems I had with graded quizzes were with copying the course to a new section:  
- The setting to have new quizzes turned on did not copy with the course, I had to go back and turn it on. 
- The new quizzes all transferred as unpublished, so I had to turn each one on. 
- Some failed to transfer, and so I had to click a "retry" button. 
- After the "retry" transfer those specific quizzes were not in a module anymore, so I had to find the correct place and insert them.
- Lockdown browser settings do not transfer with new quizzes copied to a new course.  Previously I could just click the lockdown browser tab and have it confirm that my settings had been applied, now I must click each individual quiz, turn on lockdown browser, open advanced settings, allow ipads, and allow chromebooks.  One. at. a. time. for. each. quiz.

Those course copy issues are a real problem if you have to provide instructions for other faculty to teach a course that you designed.  Not knowing about those issues before you copy the course make it worse, especially if the course is copied by an admin that did not create the course to a section that will not be seen by the faculty who designed the course.  (Which is the case for us...) 

I believe that they are working on at least some of the course copy issues.  If those don't bother you, you could use a mix of new quizzes (for graded quizzes) and classic quizzes (for practice quizzes) like I did as way to start working out how to get things done in new quizzes.

[Reshanga]

Yes please have the option within new quizzes to categorise as practice or ungraded (similar to classic quizzes) so they do not appear as gradebook assignments/clutter the gradebook which currently has very limited filter options. 

[CASEYBARNES]

Yes!  My Warm-Ups and Exit Tickets were always "practice quiz" and did not junk up my grade book but were checkpoints for understanding.  With New Quizzes my grade book is a mess.

[emily_smith2]

I agree, we have a lot of "test your knowledge" type quizzes at the end of each week and it would be nice to include essay questions in these with model answers given as feedback instead of making the quizzes without essay questions as they would need to be marked.

[adarsh]

+1 from me on this. Both from the standpoint of needing a way to offer practice quizzes in New Quizzes as well as the way that New Quizzes appear on the gradebook even if they are marked as not counting toward the final grade.

[JanisKea]

Agree with many of comments (criticisms?) already made re: New Quizzes including the overall "look" and the lack of many tools, including practice quizzes! As was noted by several others, practice quizzes are an important formative assessment tool and having the scores in the gradebook not only clutters the gradebook with info students don't necessarily want to see when viewing grades, but as already noted, sends the wrong message to students as a tool for assessing their knowledge without penalty.

[whelpton]

I absolutely agree with this complaint. I am trying out the New Quizzes feature this year as there are a number of aspects that I very much like (e.g. randomisation and moderation). But I have just discovered the lack of "practice quizzes" and it is an absolute disaster. Not being able to mark certain quizzes as "practice" rather than "assignment" has ramifications throughout the system and spreads clutter everywhere.

I beg you - please allow us to mark New Quizzes as practice and handle them in the same way as the Classic Quizzes.

Otherwise, there is much that I am enjoying about the new set-up...

All the best,

Matthew.

[justinjoslin]

A simple solution would be to add a "Not Graded" option in the "Display Grade as" dropdown like there is for every other assignment. Not sure why this feature disappears when the assignment is a New Quiz.

I use this feature to generate ungraded formative assessments (I guess practice quizzes), but they absolutely clutter my gradebook and make it confusing for my students. There needs to be a way to remove these assignments from the gradebook like there is for all the other assignments. This is a basic feature that should be added ASAP.

[FSSimone]

We are also missing practice quizzes within new quizzes. It is absolutely necessary for us to provide practice quizzes also in the future! Please overthink handling and usability of new quizzes.