Quiz Options
The Quizzes tool allows instructors to test students' learning, both for formative and summative assessments. It can also be used to collect feedback from students via the survey option. For a face-to-face class, for example, Quizzes can be used to encourage students to complete reading before the class meets for a lecture on a related topic. For any class, another example is an anonymous survey used to gather student feedback on a particular lesson or tool used in the class. The available options allow for a variety of uses.
The visibility of a Quiz can be controlled like it is for content items and Discussions. A quiz can be published or unpublished (draft), and its availability can be set for a particular date and time. If a Quiz is linked from a Module, the Module's visibility and availability settings take precedence.
Among the options for quizzes are excluding them from the Grades calculation (great for practice assessments) and allowing multiple attempts. You can decide how the score for a multiple-attempt Quiz is calculated. Time limits can be set for Quizzes and you can control what students see when they submit a Quiz and when they can see correct answers. (Students can be quite clever at figuring out that the feedback for those who submit earlier might be valuable information for classmates.) Question answers can be shuffled, which means that each student will receive the same answers for that question in a random order.
The questions for Quizzes can be organized in Question Banks, which can be used to arrange for a random subset of questions to appear on each attempt. (The aforementioned cleverness has less utility when each student sees a different set of questions.) There are several types of questions, most of which can be graded automatically (except the Essay question type!), and specific feedback can be attached to the answers chosen by students.
Canvas Instructor Guide
Canvas Video Guide
Assignment Options
The Assignment tool is Canvas's option for conducting a variety of assessments of student learning. From online submissions of papers and paragraphs to offline activities like performances or paper exams, the Assignment tool makes it easy to collect and share scores and feedback with students.
As with content tools, Discussions, and Quizzes, the published or unpublished (draft) setting is an option to limit whether students can see an Assignment. Dates and times can be used to control when an Assignment can be submitted. And remember that the published and date settings for a Module override the settings for linked Assignments they contain.
Each Assignment has a submission type, which designates whether it is an online assignment using Canvas, an online assignment using an external tool, or an offline assignment. For Canvas online assignments, you can decide the online entry options for students: text entry, website URL, media recording, and/or file upload. For file upload, you can limit the file type that can be uploaded. This option is especially useful if your students use Pages to write papers - Pages can export to MS Word format, but MS Word cannot read files created in the native Pages format.
Finally, you can create group assignments and/or require peer reviews of assignments. These options can be especially useful in a fully online class, as students are less likely to make connections with each other when they do not regularly meet in person.
Canvas Instructor Guide
Canvas Video Guide
Feedback and Grades
The tool that instructors use to give feedback to students is called the SpeedGrader, and it can be used for giving students feedback on any Assignment, Quiz, or Graded Discussion. The SpeedGrader allows you to look sequentially at each student's work and give feedback (text and/or audio/video comments and a grade or score). It shows you your progress for that item and its options include hiding student names.
When grading an Assignment with the file submission turned on and the student has submitted a file in certain formats (MS Word, MS PowerPoint, and PDF), you can use Crocodoc to provide inline commenting on student submissions. Note that those annotations cannot be viewed by screen readers, so for usability purposes the same information should be provided in the comments field of the sidebar. If a file cannot be opened with Crocodoc it still will appear embedded within the SpeedGrader window if it is one of the file types supported by the Canvas document previewer.
Students can view their feedback in two ways: via their submission view if the graded assignment was online (Graded Discussion, Quizzes, and online Assignments) and via the Grades link in Course Navigation. Students can only see their own grades and not those of their classmates. Their view includes a nifty "What-If" feature that allows them to forecast future grades based on upcoming assignments. It also shows both their current score (based on assignments graded) as well as their total score (including all points possible for the course).
For instructors, the same link displays the entire Gradebook, with all students and all assignments for the class. Scores and comments can be directly entered for grade items, and you can add columns for new grade items within that page. Other options include exporting and importing scores, viewing the grades of students who have been dropped from the class, and excusing a student from an assignment so that it is not included in that student's overall calculation. Finally, you can also write notes about particular students that are separate from any particular grade item.
Canvas Instructor Guide
Canvas Video Guide
Course Statistics
A final way to assess both students and the course itself is through Course Statistics. This is accessed from the Settings page and it shows you information about the total number of Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes present in the course as well as the number of submissions for each. You can also see which students have recently logged in and then click on a student's name to see the entry for that person on the People page. From there you can view the student's access report to see which items the student has viewed inside your course. Also that page includes a report showing each of the interactions you have had with that student.
Canvas Instructor Guide