Alamo Colleges District

Instructor Checklist: Migrating "Classic" Quizzes to New Quizzes

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This list has been adapted from the comprehensive Instructor New Quizzes Readiness Checklist found in the Canvas Community and can provide instructors general steps for migrating existing (or "Classic") quizzes to the New Quizzes assessment engine. For more information about New Quizzes, please visit the New Quizzes Transition course in Canvas.

NOTE: As new information and features in New Quizzes become available, this checklist will be updated.

During peak times of usage in Canvas (for instance: Convocation week and the first few days of class), migration to New Quizzes may take up to 1-2 hours.

Currently Canvas allows you to migrate your existing Canvas quizzes to New Quizzes in two ways:

  1. Migrate quizzes and question banks individually in a course
  2. Bulk migrate all quizzes and question banks through the course copy/import process

Once you decide the method you'd like to choose to migrate your content, follow these steps to add New Quizzes to your Canvas course.

1. Import course content into an unpublished Canvas shell.

Import course content into an unpublished Canvas shell, especially if you plan to complete the migration process in a production (or "live") course where students are enrolled. If the course is active, Canvas will send students a notification each time a New Quiz has been published.

Contact the Canvas campus administrator at your college's instructional technology support office if you would like to complete the migration process in a staging shell. This will ensure students do not receive Canvas notifications as you make adjustments to your course.

Bulk Quiz Migration

If you would like to migrate all Class Quizzes and associated Question Banks in the course import process, select the option to Import existing quizzes as New Quizzes and skip to step 4 after you've enabled New Quizzes in the course. Otherwise, proceed with the next two steps for migrating quizzes individually.

2. Enable New Quizzes for the Canvas shell.

Enable the New Quizzes app in the course Settings > Feature Previews tab. This action will connect (or "turn on") the tool for your course and provide you the option to create new assessments or migrate existing quizzes to the new quiz engine.

3. Migrate Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes.

Skip to step 4 if you are bulk migrating quizzes and question banks through the course import process.

During the migration process, Canvas creates a copy of your Classic quiz and imports it as a New Quiz to your Canvas shell, so you will receive a Canvas notification via email once the import process has completed.

Migrate your Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes from the Quizzes index page. Migrated quizzes will import into the course in an Unpublished state.

Question Groups and Question Banks will migrate to New Quizzes, but with some caveats. Please see this New Quizzes update in the Canvas Community for more information.

4. Proof each newly migrated assessment for accuracy.

Most Classic quizzes will migrate to the New Quizzes engine with their instructions, questions, and quiz settings intact. However, it is highly recommended that you check the following areas of each newly migrated quiz to ensure your content transferred to the new assessment engine successfully:

To learn more about what features are coming to New Quizzes, visit the New Quizzes Roadmap in the Canvas Community.

5. Make necessary edits to an assessment's settings and content.

If some items do not migrate as they were set up in Classic quizzes, make necessary edits to the questions, or consider reformatting the assessment to include one of the NEW question types:

The assignment details and quiz settings can also be managed to ensure the assessment will deliver to students how you designed it.

6. Place the New Quizzes in their proper assignment groups/modules and "Publish."

When a Classic quiz is migrated to the New Quizzes engine, it imports "Unpublished" into an Assignment group titled Migrated Quizzes which can be found on the Assignments index page. If you organize your assignments or use weighted groups, be sure to move the new assessments to their respective group.

Users who organize their course content within Modules will also need to add and place the newly migrated quizzes into their respective modules. If you would like to manage the flow of content in your course, add Module requirements.

Don't forget to Publish the assessment to make it visible to students.

7. Remove the Classic Quizzes from the Canvas shell.

Once your New quizzes have been proofed and published, you will need to remove the Classic quizzes from the course. There are two options for this:

  1. If you would like to retain a copy of the Classic quizzes in your course to reference later, unpublish and remove the Classic quiz from their respective modules. These actions will not remove the original quizzes from the course, and you can still find them on your course Assignments or Quizzes index pages.
  2. If you would like to delete the Classic quizzes from the course, navigate to the Quizzes index page and delete each Classic quiz. (Deleting Classic quizzes from the course will also remove them from the Modules or Assignment groups they were placed in previously.)

To distinguish which quiz engine is being used for an assessment, you can quickly reference the rocket ship icon next to a quiz's title:

  • Classic Quizzes will have a hollow (or empty) rocket ship icon next to their title
  • New Quizzes will have a solid (or filled-in) rocket ship icon next to their title

8. Import the course content into other sections (as needed) and publish the courses.

Once your course has been set up with New Quizzes, copy the content to other sections by importing the course content from the shell you completed the quiz migration process.

For additional resources on migrating your Classic quizzes to the New Quizzes engine, consult the Canvas Instructor Guides for New Quizzes.

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