The Much Anticipated Printing Quizzes Option

The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.

SuSorensen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
17
9661

The Much Anticipated Printing Quizzes Option

 

Printing options will be available in New Quizzes soon. We’re pretty clear on teacher needs and use cases thanks to the extensive feedback the community has provided. (We’re really focusing on high impact changes now!!)  Also, although it sounds like it isn’t as critical, we're hearing that a simplified workflow for students to print might be desirable -- assuming teachers have full control of such a tool’s availability.

See also: All about Printing New Quizzes (Prod 8/21)

TLDR: Printing For Teachers in August; Option to Allow for Student - Later?

  • Teachers will have the ability to print blank quizzes to take, a student completed quiz or a sample answer key for a quiz. 
  • Option to Allow Student Print? - Teachers may enable students to print a blank quiz or their completed quiz based upon the quiz settings and quiz answer display options. Students would be able to print a quiz when they need it without requiring others to print and pass along to them. 

 

Upcoming Feature Description

Printing for Teachers. The options to print a blank quiz or a sample answer key will be available from the New Quiz build page. After selecting the appropriate option from the actions kabob, teachers are presented with a font size selector. Once a choice has been made, a standard browser print dialog appears.  Teachers may select a printer or choose to download the file.

With these changes on the Build page, teachers will be able to:

  • support students with IEP or 504 plans by printing quizzes so that they are visually accommodating and possible to physically manipulate
  • provide students without access to technology; loss of power or of internet connectivity with the ability to take the same quiz as classmates
  • print a sample answer key for note taking so that they can further refine and improve curriculum development
  • print an answer key to provide as supporting evidence in their end of year evaluations, a record of assessment to division offices or accreditors

 

Teachers Print Blank Quiz or Sample Answer Key from Build PageTeachers Print Blank Quiz or Sample Answer Key from Build Page

 

 

Additionally, from the Moderate page, teachers may print a specific student’s completed quiz. Click on one of the quiz attempts from the student’s results, then print the completed quiz. From there, users see the familiar font size selection and browser print dialog. Printing from the Moderate page, teachers will be able to:

  • print a student completed quiz for external moderation
  • provide a sample of student completed quiz for evidence to accreditors 
  • retain a student completed quiz for archival purposes
  • enable teachers to grade non-automatic grading types offline to mark up



Randomization/Item Bank experience

If a teacher is looking to create unique quizzes using question/ answer randomization or pull random questions from an Item Bank they will need to select ‘print quiz’ for each unique quiz. There is no automatic randomization from the print preview. Increasing the number of copies to print will generate that number of quizzes in duplicate. The behavior applies for both a blank quiz and sample answer key printing.



LATER?

Option to Allow Student Print. Teachers can allow students to print their own blank quiz to take or allow printing their own completed quiz. Using the settings, teachers may choose, on a  quiz- by- quiz basis, to allow students the ability to self-service for printing. Completed quiz printing would match the ‘restrict student results’ settings which already apply for onscreen viewing.  The default setting for student printing would be to disallow.

If a teacher changes settings to make student printing available it would: 

  • provide an opportunity for students to make corrections so the teacher can review for possible grade adjustment
  • variety in opportunity for student study and learning by printing a previously graded quiz
  • print a blank quiz to complete offline to suit learning accommodations 

 

Not Included:

Printing an entire Item Bank

In-app emailing quiz for student to print

Downloading all student quizzes submitted at once

Print a 'one question at a time” experience



As early as 2015, there has been consistency in what teachers needed from quiz printing. 'The times they are a changin,' and in 2021 much of the world is in a blended learning environment. I’m interested to hear your thoughts regarding the value or concerns in adding teacher settings to allow students to print. Does blended make this more or less useful?

Tags (2)

The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.

17 Comments
Steven_S
Community Champion

I am happy to see the student print option would be controlled by settings set by the instructor.  That control is important for exam security.

BethCrook
Community Coach
Community Coach

So much excitement with this post!!

mjennings
Community Contributor
cvalle
Community Participant

Thank you! How will this work with Essay or File Upload questions? Is there a way to have a "correct" answer associated with these questions for the Solution Key printout?

Also will there by any way to control the white space between questions? I'm thinking about math questions where students will write their work.

SuSorensen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Love where your head is at, @cvalle. In the same way that essays and uploads need manual grading so that a teacher can review and determine correctness, we thought it more prudent to not mark correctness for those in the sample answer key.  What type approach would you take?

That's an interesting idea. Currently we're just solving for the situation by the old standby of use additional paper as needed. 

cvalle
Community Participant

Thanks for your feedback @SuSorensen and thanks again for implementing this feature! 

I think that many math teachers are using the File Upload question type in the following way: Students write their work and final results on physical paper and then upload a picture of this (or even type it out in an Essay question).

When grading a complex math question that has multiple steps we generally have our own worked out solution to cross reference while grading the student's solution. The way I do this right now is I upload an image of my version of the work and result in the General Feedback box in new quizzes for that question. This way the "correct" answer is permanently stored with the question within canvas, and I do not have to hunt down that answer on my computer or reproduce it from scratch every time I grade. The ability to have those "correct" answers in the printout would be convenient but is not a deal breaker.

Controlling the blank space between questions again would be a convenience that would allow students to write work directly on the quiz.  A lot of math teachers grade by page rather than by student, i.e grade everyone's first page and then grade everyone's second page and so on. When student's write responses on separate sheets of paper there will not be a uniform layout of responses and so grading by page is not really an option.

cokekasey
Community Explorer

Do we have a release date for this feature yet? I am so excited about this feature as is many teachers in my district. For Geometry, my kids do better by doing paper assignments. Thank you so much for this addition! 

audra_agnelly
Community Champion

@cokekasey it's in the deploy scheduled for TOMORROW!!!!!! I am so excited for my teachers!!!

SuSorensen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Yes! It is behind a feature flag though, just incase there are any unanticipated problems. So, you can expect this with the standard feature introduction of the third Saturday. It should be waiting for you to use on Monday! I'm going to post a walk thru to the New Quizzes User Group in the next day or so.

b_lockhart-gilr
Community Member

Cool.  Any chance there'll be progress on allowing us to download New Quiz results, a key feature from Classic Quiz that is sorely missing on New Quiz?

jjohns2
Community Member

This would be a great feature! Any word on when it'll be available? I've tried printing but only get the first page of the test to print. 

ccallahan2
Community Member

That is the problem I had today.  Any ideas? 

audra_agnelly
Community Champion

@SuSorensen I'm running into a couple issues with the print feature. I just submitted details to Support (ticket 08030454). Crux of the issues:

  • Images are not scaling and are getting cutoff in the margins as a result
  • Line breaks aren't forced between questions, so there is a disruptive flow in the quiz. The quiz attached to my ticket has a stimulus, so page break partway down the column splits up both the stimulus and the question.
  • Already mentioned in a prior comment above: when printing a student submission only the first page can be printed. 
SuSorensen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear that! @audra_agnelly and @jjohns2 

I just re-tested in mine and am not seeing the problems above. There may be specific things about your situation which cause the issue. Support will best be able to troubleshoot, but I'll keep an eye out if there is a bug which comes our way. Thanks!

audra_agnelly
Community Champion

Well, the response I received from support was that printing quizzes is not an available feature...

SuSorensen
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Author

Oh, that makes me sad. I'll reach out to support leadership. 

 

jr0024
Community Member

The printing options for New Quizzes is greatly appreciated. However, will there be an option for "Downloading all student quizzes submitted at once" for saving/printing? Sometimes it is requested to have copies of student completed quizzes for a large class for evidence to accreditors/accreditation purposes.