New Quizzes and Copying to a different Course -- Stuck on Deleted Version!

[JordanGarciaNAU]

Good morning!

I'm attempting to help faculty on campus with a bizarre issue surrounding New Quizzes. The issue is:

Faculty member copies a New Quiz from Course A over to Course B. They edit and add a question to the New Quiz in Course A and delete that previously copied version in Course B. They then re-copy the edited New Quiz that has an added question to Course B, but what copies over is the previous version, without the edit.

My colleague thought it might have something to do with that New Quiz having been migrated from a Classic Quiz, but I recreated the same issue with a fresh New Quiz. 

Any insights to this super strange issue is greatly appreciated. Thank you! 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @JordanGarciaNAU ...

I think you lost me somewhere in the middle of the process you described.  So, the faculty member copies a New Quiz from Course A to Course B.  You then say that a question is edited/added to the New Quiz in Course A.  (This is where I get lost.)  If the New Quiz was just copied to Course B, why would edits/additions be made to Course A and then delete a previously copied version in Course B?  Maybe I'm not completely understanding the process...so if you could shed any light on this, that would be great...thanks!

[JordanGarciaNAU]

Hi @Chris_Hofer, thank you for your reply. The WHY behind her deleting the New Quiz from Course B to then re-copy over the Quiz would be because she teaches multiple sections of the same course, so it'd be more like copying over the freshly edited New Quiz to Course B, C ,D ,E ,F . I am trying to cajole her towards rolling her sections up into one course but that's another battle.

This seems like a bug, though regardless of the Why. That the New Quiz in Course B resurfaces after it was deleted and an updated New Quiz was recopied into it. 

Sorry for not having been clearer in my initial explanation.

[paul_fynn]

Hi @JordanGarciaNAU 

I believe that this should be a known issue by now, as we've seen a handful of these since Christmas and are still trying to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately my quiz Guru colleague is on leave, but I'll try and get a view from him as to what the issue is and whether he managed to resolve it.

From memory you may need to import the quiz into a third place and then imprt it again from there - I think that might be his workaround.

Please do let us get on and, if you can, escalate through your local support - it's not an ideal behaviour (or solution)

[JordanGarciaNAU]

Good morning @paul_fynn , thank you for your reply. Please do keep me in mind when you're quiz guru returns, I'll try out that method of importing the quiz into a 3rd place, but that'd feel so funky!

I will let you know if I figure out a different solution, though! 

[paul_fynn · Accepted solution]

Having talked to my Guru, there are varied solutions to varied New Quiz issues, but essentially it seems likely that this may be a variation of the 'back to the future' issue that we see in Ally accessibility - in the Ally case a teacher upgrades materials in site B that were originally imported from site A, but when site B is copied, to site C, Canvas pulls the original versionfrom site A rather than the amended version from site B.

Coming back to the quiz issue, the rationale for copying updated Quiz A to a third place course X then from X back to B is to break the historic Quiz link between A and B and replace it with teh new version.

It feels like this needs to be investigated as part of Course and Quiz import functionality - clearly there is benefit in reusing existing content rather than duplicating it unnecessarily, however the process needs to be able to identify when an imported asset has been updated in the current site in the iterim, and take the current version forwards rather than the original, if that makes sense ?

[JordanGarciaNAU]

@paul_fynn Thank you for relaying this to me and thanks to your Quiz Guru. The idea of needing to break the link makes a ton of sense, but hopefully this is something the engineers at Canvas can figure before it confounds anymore of our faculty!

Have an excellent week!

[paul_fynn]

@JordanGarciaNAU just picked up on this Roadmap Article; it at least quantifies the problem, but we would struggle to operationalise this at scale. The same article also talks about switching New Quizzes to COmmon Cartridge as a possible solution path ....

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Product-Blog/New-Quizzes-End-of-Quarter-Update-for-Q1-2024/ba...

Course files in Item Banks Known Issue update

Last September, we posted about New Quizzes Migration - Question Banks to Item Banks. We identified a known issue related to course files in item banks.  Copying a course does not automatically change the links in an item bank, so when you use a question from an item bank in the new course, the links would still refer back to the original course. The current workaround is as follows:

If someone wants to put an image in item bank content (as part of a question), they are either loading it from their user files or from their course files.  If they are loading the image from their own user files, as long as they set a user file as readable, then the links will work in item banks when they copy a course. A warning appears only if it is course linked content, so if they remove it as a course file and move to a user file then the warning should not come up. Once they move the file over to their user files. They will need to delete the old link to the course file and re-insert the new link to the user file the way they would normally insert a link with the Rich Content Editor in the question.

The bigger picture around this issue is that this work entails improving Canvas file handling to allow for better support of files not directly associated with a single course or user such as those that are in use by item banks.  We consider this a top priority as we work to optimize the capabilities of item banks and the portability of quizzes. As senior engineering leadership is discussing the work, please stay tuned for an update once they have a plan for a path forward.

[JordanGarciaNAU]

This is really interesting @paul_fynn especially considering the other problem with which she had to come was about not being able to see images in copied New Quizzes.

I'm glad to here they are on the roadmap to addressing these issues, they aren't obvious but can really trip up a course! Thank you for sharing.