The Quercus Support Resources have moved to a new home with the Center for Teaching Support and Innovation (CTSI).
View all of the new support pages for the Academic Toolbox at:

UofT.me/q-resources

The information on this page is no longer being updated.
The new support page for this can be found at this link:

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/online-assessment-tools/

On This Page

Overview
Assignments
- Microsoft Office 365 Assignments
- Comment Library/Saved Comments
Gradebook
- New Gradebook
- Anonymous Moderated Marking Audit Trail for Assignment Submissions
- Important Information about Letter Grades in Quercus
- Last name, First name as Separate Cells
- CSV column headings
Plagiarism Review (Plagiarism Detection Tool)
Quizzes (Classic and New)
Peer Review and Assessments
Rubrics
Learning Outcomes
Quercus Course Data and Reports

Please be advised : Copying equations from a question in a Quiz into an answer may cause portions of the answer to be blank. Students should use the "Insert Math Equation" option in the Rich Content Editor to add equations to an answer, instead of copy/pasting equations from the question.

When using the Equation editor : Using the underscore "_" symbol in the "Basic View" may break the display for your answer. It is recommended to use the "Advanced View" if you are using underscores.

Overview

Quercus offers several assessment tools you can use to assess student learning in your courses and monitor student progress across learning outcomes, including Assignments and Quizzes.

The Assignments page in your Quercus course menu will display several forms of assessment in one location.

Assignments on the course navigation menu

The items automatically displayed in the Assignments tab include:

Any graded & ungraded assignments you create
Any graded quizzes or graded discussions you create, even if you create those items in other parts of your course (e.g. from the calendar, quizzes tab, discussions tab, or from within Modules).

Assignments

Assignments can be created to collect student work online (or on paper) and provide students with grades and feedback. Assignments can also be created to add columns in the Gradebook to enter grades for no-submission activities such as participation.

Assignments can be assigned to individual students, groups, or sections.

When creating an assignment you could choose one of the following submission options:

No Submission: Create a column in the Gradebook to give students a grade for participation in an activity or event that does not require any form of submission.
Online: Collect online submissions from students in the form of uploaded files, Website URLs (e.g. blogs), Media Recordings, or Text Entry. If the Media Recordings submission type has been selected for assignment submissions, they do not count against user or course quota. To learn more about available options for using media files in Quercus (Canvas), view the Canvas Media Comparison PDF.
On Paper: Give students a grade for something turned in during class (a project, printed essay, presentation, etc.).
External Tool: When you want students to submit their assignments using an integrated tool. (e.g. peerScholar)

Submission Type

Submission Type does not apply to Not Graded assignments.

You can create assignments on the Assignments page. Once the Assignment is created, you can add details for the assignment such as the description, file submission types, due date and point value. Review the assignment to ensure all elements are in finalized form before publishing.

Microsoft Office 365 Assignments

Instructors can also use the Office 365 integration to create Office 365 assignments.

Comment Library/Saved Comments

Comments can be entered into a Comment Library in SpeedGrader to be saved for future use.

For more information, please consult the Canvas video guide, or the Canvas documentation .

Gradebook

The New Gradebook, activated in May 2019, has various changes and improvements. The New Gradebook Instructor Guide provides steps on grading, organizing, and managing the Gradebook and resources and support. For graded assignments, instructors can view and enter grades for students in the Gradebook.

Visit our New Gradebook Information page.

SpeedGrader

Instructors can also use SpeedGrader to view, comment, and grade student submissions directly within the browser. Learn how to get to SpeedGrader from the New Gradebook.

Anonymous Moderated Marking Audit Trail for Assignment Submissions

The SpeedGrader can display an audit log that records all changes that affect an assignment submission. This allows instructors to verify how grades were awarded and how changes were made. After an assignment has been unmuted, the instructor can access the assessment audit link in SpeedGrader. The link displays the student’s grade and when it was graded. Instructors should review the steps for auditing an assessment in the SpeedGrader. The Audit log will also display comments that have been made on the submission, but there is a character limit. Comments that extend beyond the character limit will not display the full text in the audit log.

Moderated grading: the window displays when the grade was posted to the student.

For Moderate Grading Assignments : If Annotation-style comments within the document are used and a custom final grade was assigned, only those comments that were made by the moderator can be seen. If another grader is selected as the approved final grade, comments from that grader and the moderator will be shown. Any Annotation comments made by other graders will be lost once Grades are released and posted.

Non-moderated assignments: the grade represents the last time a grade was applied.

The window will display if anonymity was turned on and the effective date and time.

Anonymous Assignments: then the window displays the Anonymous On status.
If the assignment is only moderated and not anonymous, the window displays the Anonymous Off status.

The sidebar displays graders and final graders as well as any admins that have interacted with the assignment or a submission. Users are ordered by role: Student, Grader, Final Grader, Admin. Instructors can view the auditing trail for the assignment and submission by clicking on the name of the user.

The start date and time of the audit trail displays at the top of the event list, which may include the following events: assignment created, submission created, assignment settings, anonymity status, grade postings, and muted status. Icons display next to each event to represent each action (e.g., edit, anonymous turned on, anonymous muted). Submission comment events and DocViewer comment events also display, with comment text truncated at 2 lines.

To manage releasing grades, you can select a Grade Posting Policy for the course or for individual assignments and temporarily hide assignment grades and feedback.

Note about Quercus (Canvas) System Performance:

In large courses, SpeedGrader loading times are affected by a threshold of data points that can be loaded within a 60-second window. This threshold is based on a single submission per student. Multiple submissions by the same student increases the submission threshold. Assignments with more than 1,500 submissions may result in delayed SpeedGrader loading times, and assignments with more than 2,500 submissions may fail to load at all.

Important Information about Letter Grades in Quercus

Important information about letter grades in Quercus (October, 2018)

Last name, First name as Separate Cells

The option to separate data by last name and first name can be achieved using Microsoft Excel. Instructors, TAs and Graders who would like assistance with this should contact their divisional support representative.

CSV column headings

Learn more about the CSV column headings for grades and scores and what they mean in your grading process.

Plagiarism Detection

BEFORE creating an assignment that uses the Plagiarism Detection Tool, instructors must adhere to the University of Toronto Conditions of Use and inform their students at the start of the course that Plagiarism Detection will be used for coursework. Instructors must include the Conditions of Use statement in their course syllabus.

Assignments for which grades have been released (posted), via the Gradebook, enable students to view Similarity Reports.

The Plagiarism Detection Tool is used to assist in detecting textual similarities between compared works. The Plagiarism Detection Tool is an integrated tool/option in Quercus. It appears as an option when creating an online Assignment.

With the Plagiarism Detection Tool integration in Quercus courses, class and assignment setup using the plagiarism detection tool's website is not supported at U of T.

Quizzes

Students must open the quiz in only one single browser tab/window when taking quizzes. If students open the quiz in multiple browsers or in more than one tab/window in the same browser, their answers may not be saved or submitted.

There are two quiz options available in Quercus:

Classic Quizzes, and
New Quizzes

Instructors should use Classic Quizzes to deliver mid-terms and final examinations. Some features that are available in Classic Quizzes are not available in New Quizzes.

Surveys

New Quizzes does not have an option to create surveys, either graded and ungraded.

Rich Content Editor

The New Quizzes Rich Content Editor for authoring questions and submitting responses to short answer/essay questions does NOT include: Content Selector Sidebar, Accessibility Checker, HTML Editor, or Media Recorder.

Assessment Reports

The Student Analysis Report is currently not available in New Quizzes. Available New Quizzes reports may take up to 24 hours to generate and can only be viewed in the Reports page. They are not available for downloading as CSV files.

When importing a Classic Quiz QTI package to a course, you may encounter a option that cannot be deselected labeled Import assessment content as New Quizzes, forcing import as a New Quiz. To resolve this :

Go to your course Settings
Select the Feature Options tab at the top
Select the red X icon to the right New Quizzes and select Enable from the drop-down menu
Import your quiz file and uncheck the Import assessment content as New Quizzes option to import as a Classic Quiz

Classic Quizzes

Use Classic Quizzes to create a variety of question types to test your students' learning in an exam format. There are also options to create formative and self-assessments by creating practice quizzes and surveys. There are four types of quizzes available in Quercus:

Graded Quiz: A column is automatically created in the Gradebook for a graded quiz. After a student takes a graded quiz, certain question types will be automatically graded.
Practice Quiz: Use practice quiz as a learning tool to help students see how well they understand the course material. Students do not receive a grade for practice quizzes, even though the quiz results display the number of points earned in the quiz.
Graded Survey: A graded survey allows the instructor to give students points for completing the survey, but it does not allow the survey to be graded for right or wrong answers. Graded surveys have the option to be anonymous.
Ungraded Surveys: An ungraded survey allows you to get opinions or other information from your students, but students do not receive a grade for their responses. Ungraded surveys can be anonymous.

You can view all your quizzes in your course on the Quizzes page. You can also add quizzes and modify quiz settings on the Quizzes page.

In order to create a new Quiz, click the Add Quiz button.

Add a Quiz

When you create a quiz, you have a variety of options to choose from within a quiz.

In the Details tab, you can use the Rich Content Editor to add instructions for your quiz. The Office 365 integration displays the OneDrive icon in the Rich Content Editor in Quizzes and allows users to create a hyperlink to OneDrive files directly in the Rich Content Editor. You can also add links, files , and images to the Quiz instructions using the content selector.

Once you have set up the settings for your quiz, click the Questions tab to create the quiz questions and points. You can create individual quiz questions, or find questions in a question bank. You can also create a question group to randomize quiz questions.

Individual questions can be added to a Question Group. Alternatively, you can link the Question Group to a Question Bank.

Rich Content Editor in Quizzes

You can view student quiz results within each quiz in your course by viewing the quiz results page or moderating the quiz. When moderating the quiz, you can view the progress of student submissions and view the number of quiz attempts each has taken. You can also grant students extra attempts, grant extra time for timed quizzes, and manually unlock quiz attempts. As a moderator, you cannot remove student submissions.

If you are creating Multiple Choice questions and quizzes, you may find the following CTSI tips sheets helpful: Multiple Choice Question and Quiz Tips and Multiple Choice Quercus Quiz Analysis Reports.

Note about Quercus (Canvas) System Performance:

For optimum course performance in the Quercus (Canvas) interface, quiz statistics will only generate for quizzes with 100 or fewer unique questions or 1,000 total attempts. For instance, a quiz with 200 questions will not generate quiz statistics. However, a quiz with 75 questions will generate quiz statistics until the quiz has reached 1000 attempts. Results greater than these maximum values can be viewed by downloading the Student Analysis report and viewing the CSV file.

Learn more about New Quizzes

Quercus Support Resources

New Quizzes

Canvas Community

New Quizzes: Quizzes Page New Quizzes Button (2020-02-15 Screencast) from Instructure Canvas Community on Vimeo.

Classic Quizzes vs. New Quizzes Feature Comparison Chart by Instructure, Canvas Community

Peer Review and Assessment

peerScholar

The peerScholar peer assessment tool enables students to provide constructive feedback on each others' work and facilitates critical reflection on how they might improve their own work. peerScholar targets meta-cognitive thought processes, even in very large class contexts.

peerScholar is an integrated tool/option in Quercus. It appears as an option when creating an Assignment.

Peer Review Assignments

Resolved: The issue regarding the Peer Review tool has been resolved. - Tuesday January 8, 2019

Please check the Quercus Quirks page for details and updates.

Rubrics

Rubrics can be used for increasing grading efficiency, improving students’ understanding of expectations, and monitoring performance. Once you create a rubric, the rubric is saved in your course for future use. You can add the rubric to a graded Discussion, a Quiz, or an Assignment and use the rubric to grade submissions in SpeedGrader. Created rubrics can be managed in the Manage Rubrics page.

Note: Be sure to review all Rubric Settings, including adding point values for rubric grading criteria, and consult with your Divisional support representative before grading student assignment submissions. Any changes to Rubric Settings that are made after grading has begun may not be accurately reflected in the assignment and may result is grade discrepancies.

Non-Scoring Rubrics

If you would like to create a rubric with grading criteria but with no point values attached, you can create a non-scoring rubric by checking the Remove points from rubric box when you add the rubric and select its settings. You can use non-scoring rubrics to assess student submissions in SpeedGrader.

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