Canvas Question Types

Summary

This article provides brief descriptions of each of the question types in Canvas. For some types, this article provides details on how to create a question.

For instructions on creating a quiz and question banks, see Creating and Editing a Classic Quiz.

Question Types

Multiple Choice

Multiple choice questions present the student with a question and several choices for answers. The student selects one correct answer.

If you want to change which answer is correct, hover over the answer and click the green arrow to the left.

True/False

True/false questions can be answered with either true or false. Hover over either true or false and click the green arrow to the left to mark that option as correct.

Fill in the Blank

Fill in the blank questions have a question with a single blank and a set of correct answers that aren't shown to students. Students type their answer and the response is compared with the list of correct answers. The answer set is not case sensitive.

If a student submits an incorrect answer, they will see a list of the correct answers below their answer.

Fill in Multiple Blanks

Fill in Multiple Blanks questions have a question with multiple blanks and a set of correct answers for each blank that aren't shown to students. When you create a question, you use reference words to define a blank. A reference word is a word enclosed in square brackets that represents the name of a blank. The word must not contain spaces or other non-alphanumeric characters. Once a reference word is added, it will appear in the Show Possible Answers for dropdown list. Once you have created the reference words, you can add each of the correct answers by going through each reference word and adding answers like you would for a Fill in the Blank question.

For example, a question from a US History instructor's point of view might read "In [year], the delegates to the Second Continental Congress signed [document], declaring their new nation's independence from Britain." The correct answer for [year] would be 1776 and [document] would be Declaration of Independence. The student would see "In ____, the delegates to the Second Continental Congress signed ____, declaring their new nation's independence from Britain."

Multiple Answers

Multiple Answers questions are just like multiple choice questions, but they allow the student to select multiple correct answers.

Grading these questions is slightly different than the rest of the types. The value of each answer is calculated by taking the total number of points divided by the number of correct answers. For example, if the question is worth 1 point and there are 2 correct answers, each answer is worth .5 points. For each correct answer, the student gets that number of points. However, for each incorrect answer, that point value is taken away. In the previous example, if a student got one correct answer and one incorrect answer, they would receive 0 points. However, if they only got one correct answer, the student would still get .5 points.

Multiple Dropdown

Multiple dropdown questions are similar to Fill in Multiple Blanks questions, except that each blank has a dropdown with various choices associated with it. Multiple Dropdown questions also use reference words (words enclosed in square brackets) to define each dropdown. For each reference word, you define a list of answers, then select the correct one by hovering over it and clicking on the green arrow to the left.

Matching

Matching questions currently only support text questions.

Matching questions require students to match up prompts on the left with options on the right. You can add distractor options as well.

Teaching & Learning Tools