Student Guide to Using Canvas Quizzes for Exams

Things you’ll need to have before the exam

• A quiet location with uninterrupted Internet connectivity. Connect to a network in advance via wifi or preferably through an ethernet port.
• A desktop or fully charged laptop with charging cord.
• A 2 step authentication method (e.g. phone, tablet).
• A supported web browser. We recommend Chrome.

For Canvas help, please email: canvashelp@stanford.edu

Most Important Advice for using Canvas Quizzes

• Do not have the quiz open in more than one place, whether that's several tabs in the same browser, different browsers, or different computers/mobile devices. If you have a quiz open in more than one place, the auto-save might activate on a version of the quiz that doesn't have your most recent changes and that could overwrite your work.
• Click the Submit Quiz button when you are done with the quiz. Do not rely on auto-submission, because the auto-submit feature will not work if you close the browser window that contained the quiz, quit your browser, sleep your computer, or have problems with your internet connection at the point when the time limit expires or the 'available until' date passes.

Tips

Navigation Bookmark questions you’d like to return to by clicking this button to the left of the question: To return to a question, click its bookmark in the table of contents. Answered questions will fade out with a checkmark next to the question while unanswered questions are bold with a question mark icon.  Time Locate how long you’ve been working below the table of contents. If you’d prefer not to see the elapsed time (for untimed exams) or the countdown (for timed exams), click the Hide link.

Table of contents Depending on screen size, the table of contents will be at the top right, or at the bottom of the screen.

 

Essay text box  Be sure to click outside of the text box as you type occasionally to save your work. For optimal height, click and drag handle in bottom right corner of the text box down. For optimal font size, change Font Sizes in the text box’s menu bar.

 

File Attachments

Your instructor may ask you to instead attach a file, rather than type into a field. They may specify a specific file type. 

Submit Quiz 

Press Submit Quiz when you are ready to do so; quizzes are only autosubmitted if a time limit or an Available Until date/time was set by your instructor AND your browser is still active when that time passes. If you are going to close your browser tab, quit the browser or sleep your computer, you should use the Submit Quiz button first.

In the event of an Internet Outage

Your answers are saved every time you move to a new question or click outside  a text box. However, if your Internet connection goes out, you will see this message

You can continue to work while this message shows, but your work won’t be backed up to the server. Until your computer reconnects, do not select back, forward, or refresh or close your browser and do not click the Submit Quiz button. 

If Canvas does not reconnect by the end of the exam, you can take the following steps

• File Upload or Text entry: save your work in a document and email the instructor with the exam attached when your computer does reconnect.  Do not modify your doc after the end of the test (your time stamp will prove you completed work on time).
• For all other question types: take a photo of the screen and email it to your instructor when you reconnect
• If you have a smart phone, take a photo of your test and email it to your instructor.