Copying questions from one quiz to another without copying a course

[zellerk]

I made a "quiz" in canvas to use a unit test. I would like to now copy the questions straight into another quiz to make check-in quizzes to use as CFAs of students' progress during the unit. I would also like to be able to move questions that are already created into question groups on an assessment, but it does not allow that. Why is this?? Is there not a way to do this if you initially start by creating the questions within the quiz first instead of creating them in a question bank? Does anyone else find Canvas's quiz creating features EXTREMELY lacking?

[lph]

Hi  @zellerk ‌

Here are are a few tricks:

Duplication

There is a clever trick to make a copy of a quiz, without exporting, downloading, and uploading. 

Go to your course, choose Settings then Import Course Content. Next to Course Content is a drop down. Choose copy a course. Select your current course. Do not copy everything. Instead, there is a radio button for Select specific content. Click the import button. Under Current Jobs will be a new button stating to select the content; click it. Click on the arrow next to the term quiz and find the quiz. Place a check mark. Now click Select Content. 

Once this job runs, you can go to Quizzes and you will see the duplicate. Repeat as many times as you wish — choosing the new duplicate quiz and not the original. 

Quiz to banks 

Go to settings —> Export Course Content

Choose the Quiz radio button 

Create Export

Download QTI file

Now reload settings—> Import Course Content

Choose QTI

Find file

Select quiz

Run

Now the quiz questions are in a bank.

FWIW, I suggest to new teachers to start with the question banks. 

I hope this helps!

[dhartm]

The provided answer says how to make multiple copies of a quiz through an elaborate process, but does not explain how to move questions from one quiz to another.  Still seems like a severe weakness of Canvas.

[MpsGrl78]

In eCourseware I was able to merge quizzes so that I could use them as pretests the next semester/year. No so with Canvas. This is a severe drawback with this LMS

[JoulSmith]

This does not answer the original question, and that is because Canvas does not have that option, which is a huge setback for instruction and course organization. This is one of the handiest tools in Blackboard. You can't even create a question bank from former questions from an old quiz.

[Stef_retired]

@JoulSmith  Since you may be relatively new to Canvas, you might not yet know that Canvas currently has two quiz tools, and the thread under which you've commented is specific to the process in Classic Quizzes, which is scheduled for deprecation. Instructors can make a copy of a New Quizzes assessment by following the instructions in  How do I duplicate a New Quizzes assessment?

[PatrickCoin]

That sounds great, but I am trying to adjust to Canvas in the year 2023 and New Quizzes is still in beta, as far as I can tell. Our instructional IT people are loathe to implement it for apparently good reasons. I certainly look forward to New Quizzes being implemented in the future, but I need solutions with old quizzes now. 

I've been researching various issues with Canvas quizzes and I've seen discussions going back to 2019 claiming various issues are solved in New Quizzes, due to be out of beta anytime. 

[prof_aro]

It will be much more time saving for me to just type out the question once again instead of going through this cumbersome route. If I need 5 questions from 5 different quizzes to make up a new quiz then the method you are proposing will take eternity. But thanks anyway for suggesting this. 

[prof_aro]

In Blackboard one can copy a single question from one quiz to another very easily. In CANVAS there is no way to do that. 

[JoulSmith]

This does not answer the original question, and that is because Canvas does not have that option, which is a huge setback for instruction and course organization. This is one of the handiest tools in Blackboard. You can't even create a question bank from former questions from an old quiz.

[ijazansari]

The last answer by Stefanie still does not address the issue. Canvas is limiting in many aspects. 

[bhlavaty]

Agreed, it is a complete non-answer. 

[ali_cheaib · Accepted solution]

There is a workaround for this issue. Go to the quiz in question and copy it onto the same course. Because it is a quiz that contains questions, Canvas will list it under the question bank "unfiled." You need to go to the new quiz and select "Find Questions." You will see Unfiled questions at the bottom of the list on the left-side panel. Simply add the questions to the new quiz.

[ryan_smith]

This worked for me. Thanks!

[c961]

Hello. I have a course in english and now my team translate to spanish (we are a peruvian university), i try to use the unfilled method, but i can´t find the translate questions, only the originals.

Any idea? thanks

[r_sikes]

THANK YOU! 

We switched from Blackboard to Canvas in 2020. A very special year for adopting lots of new online software.

I never really liked Blackboard and do like many things about Canvas for creating questions But as has been said many times on these Boards, copying questions and for that matter quizzes using QTI files is tricky. And never seems to work when, like right now for me, I need a new quiz from old questions in scattered in literally hundreds of old quizzes And in the morning, 

Someone in IT showed me this trick back in 2020. It seemed too much trouble vs, copying pasting and I soon forgot the steps you describe. That was when I have very few questions and quizzes in Canvas. Now I have multitudes of both.

I eventually remembered to copy a question you need copy the quiz into the same course. Which I do a lot for other reasons. But I didn't remember where this put the questions. In Unfilled of course.

There inside unfilled were all of my questions and happily most of them now have unique ID in an ordered list. And I quickly found the 5 I needed to complete tomorrow's quiz. I would have gone faster if let me search the list. But it is done. and it is not yet midnight

This is a trick for sure not a true solution. But until NewQuiz become stable and IT decides it is good to go, the trick will do.

[ryan_smith]

ali_cheaib post from 4/12/22– that approach worked for me! Thanks!

[hansaagard]

I found that sometimes the questions I re-imported, using the solution given, did not show up in Unfiled. My solution was to export the quizzes one a time as QTI's. When I re-imported them I could put them in a bank and pull them into a quiz.