Creating Formative Assessments with Canvas Quizzes

Last updated on July 8, 2026

Formative assessments provide opportunities to monitor students’ learning and immediately provide feedback. Formative assessments are generally low-stakes and provide learners with a chance to gauge their knowledge of the course content and use the provided feedback in order to correct their mistakes before moving on to another course topic. Formative assessments can take many forms, including practice quizzes, drafts of projects, knowledge checks, and more. This Canvas Spotlight focuses on using “New Quizzes” to develop knowledge checks that can help create formative assessments for all resources in a course.

Best practices

• Include formative assessments throughout the entire course to help students prepare for larger summative assessments.
• Ensure students receive timely feedback on their formative assessments, whether the feedback comes from the instructor or from automatic grading.
• Incorporate knowledge checks that correspond to resources in the course so students can immediately monitor their understanding and get pre-programmed feedback that saves instructors time grading.

Let’s walk through it together

Create a New Quiz

1. Log in to your Canvas Account.
2. Select the Course you’d like to work in.
3. Click Quizzes in the course navigation on the left.
4. Click “+Quiz/Survey”.
5. Select the New Quizzes/Survey option.
   • To save your quiz engine selection for this course, check the Remember my choice for this course checkbox.
     • Note: You can reset your quiz engine choice from the Quiz Options menu at any time.
6. Click the Submit button.
7. Type the Quiz title in the Assignment Name box.
8. Type “0” for points (knowledge checks are typically ungraded and not worth points).
9. Check the Do not count this assignment towards the final grade box.
10. Add any necessary dates in the Due Date and Available From fields below.
    • Note: Leaving the due date blank will allow the students to go back and review the knowledge check at any time.
11. Click Build in the bottom right.
12. Click the Settings tab at the top of the page.
13. Select the toggle to Allow Multiple Attempts.
    • Note: This will allow students to practice and review the knowledge check as many times as they want.
14. Click the Build tab at the top of the page to add questions.
15. Click Return on the top right to leave the quiz.

Add Questions to the Quiz

1. Click the “+” button below the quiz instructions box in the middle of the page.
2. Select a Question Type.
3. Type a Question title (e.g., Institutions in the Auraria Campus).
4. Type a Question stem (e.g., Which of the following institutions are located in the Auraria Campus?).
5. Type question answer choices if relevant to the question type.
   • Note: For knowledge checks, consider using question types such as multiple choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, etc., which can be automatically graded by Canvas. This ensures that students receive immediate feedback and will not require instructor grading. Essay questions are not ideal for knowledge checks as they require manual grading from the instructor, and students will not receive immediate feedback.
6. Click Done on the bottom right to save the question.
7. Repeat Steps 1-6 to add more questions.
   • See our tutorial Create Different Types of New Quiz Questions to learn more.

Add the Quiz to a Module

1. Click Modules on the course navigation menu to the left.
2. Click the + (Plus) icon to the right of the Module title.
   • Note: view the Add Content to the Module tutorial on the MSU Denver Ready site for more information about setting up modules.
3. Select Quiz from the drop-down menu.
4. Select the name of the new quiz you just created.
5. Click Add item.
6. Click and drag on the eight-dot icon to the left of an item’s name to reorder the item in the module as needed.