New Quizzes - Rich Content Editor (RCE) integration status and plans

[TamasBalogh]

The Rich Content Editor (RCE) is a crucial part of creating and taking quizzes and the Bulk Migration Tool is dependent on RCE so we made integrating the new RCE to New Quizzes our number one priority for one of the teams working on New Quizzes. We've been working on this for several months now and have made good progress so far. We are continuing the work and will bring the new RCE to you as soon as possible. 

New RCE in New Quizzes

Just as with the API, we are going to make RCE available in separate phased releases. We made this decision purely because this way we offer value to you sooner. The development and release phases are detailed below so that you can know what to expect. 

Phase 1

In the first release we are going to bring the core functionality of RCE, providing at least the same tools as you have now in the current RCE in New Quizzes, but offer you additional cool features like HTML View, Accessibility Checker, and Word Count. Besides these, you will not just be able to upload media as you can do now in New Quizzes, but you will also be able to record media, which is the most anticipated RCE related feature in New Quizzes. Naturally, the math editor is going to be available too. This will also allow us to enable the Bulk Migration Tool in production.

Phase 2

In phase 2, you can expect most of the remaining features of RCE like: insert user/course images, media, links, documents etc. These features are not available in New Quizzes right now, therefore you won’t lose anything when the new RCE will be introduced in phase 1.  

Phase 3

In the third phase, we will make third party apps available in RCE in New Quizzes, so you will have the full functionality that the RCE can offer.

Phase 4

Lastly we will migrate your content from the current RCE to new location. For a period of time, the media you uploaded through the current editor will be displayed with the current media player. After the migration the only change you’ll see is that the media player will be the new one.

[rexj]

Thank you @TamasBalogh 

In which phase will Canvas Studio be integrated into the RCE for New Quizzes?

[TamasBalogh]

@rexj Studio will be availabe in Phase 3 as a third party application. 

[Hildi_Pardo]

Hi @TamasBalogh -- thank you for this update!  It's very exciting.

Are there estimated dates for each of these Phases, and if so, do you know what they are?   

thank you!

[dagud]

When will we be able to insert equations into the answer choices for Multiple Dropdown questions?

[KayleyHawkins]

With the new Texas testing standards, is it possible to have a character count so our students can practice what is expected of them regarding writing expectations? 

[dave-long]

Thanks for the update, I'll echo other comments here that having dates attached to these phases would be helpful, we are in the planning stages for introducing New Quizzes at Iowa. 

[kwardRLA]

I look forward to character count being added. The STAAR test in Texas has changed, and student responses are measured by character count rather than word count. 

[akhuebel]

I'm very glad to hear this, but I would hesitate to call the accessibility checker a "cool" feature.  It is an essential feature and should never have been left out to begin with.  I'm trying to check accessibility of quizzes made in New Quizzes right now and it is a nightmare.

[dlyons]

@KayleyHawkins and @kwardRLA, character count is in the Canvas RCE already (yay!) so as that functionality is added to New Quizzes it will become available there as well. You can direct anyone who needs the character count to press Tools > Word Count and they'll get a modal that looks like this:

Word Count modal

[TamasBalogh]

Hi @Hildi_Pardo and @dave-long,

Phase 1 will be released sometime in Q4. In addition to our Quizzes team, 2 more teams are working on this right now. I can't estimate the following phases at this time. 

[knoxd]

Thank you for this update.  Our teachers are incredibly anxious for phase 1 to be enacted and have access to the media recording options.  

[isabel_anievas]

Thanks for the update!

Will Immersive Reader be added to New Quizzes in any of these 4 Phases?

I have to concur with other comments that having tentative dates for these phases would be very helpful 🙂

Thanks again!

[dlyons]

@isabel_anievas, the Immersive Reader has intentionally been left out of Classic and New Quizzes because some of its functionality could be disruptive to assessment. We may reassess its inclusion in the future.

[afurr0026]

There are times that adding alt text to an uploaded image is overlooked by faculty when quickly building a quiz. Currently, alt text cannot be added later to an image that has already been uploaded in New Quizzes (or at least I have not been able to add/edit alt text to an image already uploaded in New Quizzes).

With the new RCE, will there be an “Image Options” feature to add/edit alt text as there currently is in Classic Quizzes? If so, will this be rolled out in Phase 1?

[isabel_anievas]

@dlyons Thanks for your response!

I do hope its inclusion will be reassessed. It seems like an important accessibility issue, since students who rely on the Immersive Reader may have difficulties accessing Quiz Instructions without it.

Maybe there could be a way to disable it if some instructors consider that it could interfere with assessment? 

Again, thanks for your response. I do appreciate it. 

[bgall]

Will we be able to use third-party tools such as Kaltura, Panopto to create video questions in the RCE during the last phase?  Also, will there be an accessible math/LATEX editor for our math, business and science faculty to use?

[lindsey_zmolik]

Are there plans for the RCE to be available when creating Categorization and Matching questions/answers? This would be a huge incentive for our lower elementary grades to use New Quizzes if they could create drag/drop type activities with images instead of text.

[dlyons]

@bgall, the phases currently available in beta (Phase 1 and Phase 2) do not include LTIs like Kaltura, et al. That is Phase 3 work which is currently underway. As for the an accessible Equation Editor, the same equation editor currently available through the rest of Canvas LMS will also be available in New Quizzes along with the rest of the RCE. You can see this now in your beta environment.

[hjcristea]

As another user commented, having formatting options for potential answers in all question types would be great. Even if formatting copied and pasted wasn't removed. We have encountered issues in New Quizzes where we can't use certain question types because we are asking about the accuracy of MLA and APA citations and the formatting is erased when we add them as possible answers - such as categorizing MLA and APA citations.

We also can't add images such as screen shots of correctly formatted citations for categorization. Please consider at least not stripping the formatting of a copied and pasted potential response if RCE will not be an option in the future for these.

[smiller5]

While I really appreciate the improvements in the RCE, I noticed that on the most recent update, we've lost the ability to resize the textbox.  We can still expand to a full-screen, but I don't necessarily always want to do that.