Why instructors pair SimpleQuizMaker with Canvas

Canvas New Quizzes is a powerful authoring environment — but typing 30 multiple-choice questions one at a time, writing three plausible distractors for each, and aligning to learning outcomes takes most instructors 90-120 minutes per quiz. SimpleQuizMaker compresses that to about 5 minutes: upload your reading, generate, review, export. Canvas stays your gradebook and assessment delivery layer; SimpleQuizMaker becomes your question-generation layer.

Two workflows: hosted link or QTI import

Workflow A — Share the SimpleQuizMaker link in Canvas

Fastest path. Generate the quiz on SimpleQuizMaker. Publish to get a shareable link. In Canvas, create an Assignment of type “External Tool” or simply an Assignment with the link in the description. Students click through, take the quiz, see immediate feedback. You export results as CSV and upload to the Canvas gradebook (or paste scores manually).

Best for: low-stakes practice, exit tickets, weekly knowledge checks, ungraded review.

Workflow B — Export to QTI, import to Canvas New Quizzes

Slower but fully native. Generate on SimpleQuizMaker; export the question set. Open Canvas New Quizzes; import the question bank. Build the actual quiz in Canvas with your settings (timing, attempts, accommodations). Students take the quiz inside Canvas exactly as they would any other Canvas quiz; grades flow into the gradebook automatically.

Best for: high-stakes graded assessments, accommodations-aware quizzes, anything that needs to live entirely inside Canvas for FERPA / institutional reasons.

How AI question generation works

You provide a source — PDF reading, slide export, lecture transcript, plain text, or a URL. The model:

· Extracts key concepts (definitions, claims, dates, mechanisms)
· Generates questions at the difficulty band you selected
· Writes 3 plausible distractors per MCQ based on adjacent concepts in the source
· Produces a justification for the correct answer (you can show or hide on the student-facing view)
· Drafts short-answer model responses for any non-MCQ items

You review every question in the editor before publishing. You're always in control of what students see; the AI gives you a strong starting draft, not a black box.

Use cases by course type

Intro lecture courses (100-500 students)

Weekly reading-check quizzes. Generate from each week's assigned reading; 10 questions, medium difficulty, randomized order. Use Workflow A (link share) for low-stakes weekly checks, Workflow B (QTI) for the cumulative midterm and final.

Graduate seminars (10-25 students)

Pre-class reading-check to verify students engaged with the text before discussion. 5 questions, short-answer mix. Workflow A is plenty.

Lab / methods courses

Procedural quizzes (“What's the next step if X happens?”). Upload your lab manual; generate at hard difficulty for senior students. Use Workflow B to get accommodations-aware delivery inside Canvas.

Asynchronous online courses

Every module ends with a knowledge check. Building these manually is a massive lift; AI generation makes it tractable. Mix Workflow A for formative checks and Workflow B for the module-end summative.

Quality & alignment — what to verify

AI generation gets you to 85% of a usable question bank. The last 15% is human work:

· Outcome alignment — every item should map to a course learning outcome. The editor lets you tag items.
· Distractor plausibility — read every distractor. AI occasionally produces a clearly wrong distractor that should be replaced with something tighter.
· Bloom level — verify the question is testing what you want (recall vs application vs analysis). Bump difficulty if too many items are bottom of Bloom.
· Bias / inclusion — scan names, examples, and scenarios for unintended bias the model may have introduced from training data.
· Source coverage — does the quiz cover the full reading or skew to early sections? Generate, then rebalance.

Realistic timing: a 30-question quiz that took 90 minutes to author by hand now takes about 12 minutes (90 sec generation + 10 min review).

Accessibility & accommodations

For Workflow B (QTI import), accommodations are handled by Canvas exactly as you set them on any New Quizzes assessment — extended time, alternate format, reader, etc. For Workflow A (hosted link), the SimpleQuizMaker quiz page meets WCAG 2.1 AA: full keyboard navigation, screen-reader landmarks, sufficient color contrast, no time pressure unless you explicitly enable a timer.

FERPA & data residency

Workflow A: student names and answers are stored against your SimpleQuizMaker instructor account. We don't link them to other systems. Workflow B: nothing student-identifying ever touches SimpleQuizMaker — only your question bank goes through us; submissions live entirely in Canvas. For high-FERPA-sensitivity courses, Workflow B is the safer choice.

FAQ

Is there a Canvas LTI integration? Not yet. LTI 1.3 is on the roadmap. For now, Workflow A (link share) and Workflow B (QTI export) cover most needs.

What QTI version is exported? QTI 1.2 (Canvas-compatible). Imports cleanly into both Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes.

Can I push grades into the Canvas gradebook? Workflow B yes (Canvas owns the gradebook). Workflow A: CSV export, manual upload, or paste.

Does my institution need to approve SimpleQuizMaker as a vendor? Depends on policy. For Workflow A (instructor uses a tool to author questions; students click a link), most institutions treat it like Google Docs or any web tool. For Workflow B (questions imported, students assessed inside Canvas), no student data ever reaches SimpleQuizMaker, so the question rarely comes up.

Is it free? Yes for solo instructors. Heavy use across a department / program upgrades to the Teacher plan ($19.99/mo).

Quiz Maker for Canvas LMS