Editors note: This post is the latest in a series from Tom Cotton, a Learning Designer at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. Tom has been working on a project to migrate content from the Canvas Learning Management System to Moodle and these posts describe some of the challenges faced and solutions found.
The single biggest risk to the project was converting quiz questions.
Possible Question Conversion Strategies
When you have subjects like Chemistry with 480 quiz questions and a variety of question types, copying and pasting from Canvas to Moodle is just not an option. What are the conversion options and how good are they?
Respondus
Windows only tool; training/learning required for implementation. Limited question types supported (Multiple choice/True-False). As an incomplete solution it was prone to human error, time consuming and delivered variable quality.
IMSCC/QTI
Fails to import: solution not available.
GIFT (question format)
Training/learning required for implementation, Images embedded in questions not supported. An incomplete solution, subject to human error and time-consuming.
Moodle plug-in (Canvas QTI)
Further development is required for implementation. Not supported (developer hasn’t updated since 2015). No official Moodle release. Installation approvals on Production server (high risk) would take too long; alternatively a development servers (low risk) could be used. Quality unknown.
Update Pre-Canvas Moodle Quizzes
Many Canvas subjects had a Moodle Origin. Many questions remain untouched. An extensive proceedure and time would be required to validate each question.
Recreate Quizzes from scratch
High risk of human error. Time consuming. Not feasible.
The Solution
The Canvas QTI Import. A team-member’s throw-away comment “the developer said they had been careful but they couldn’t guarantee it”. This understatement said to me this was an old-school, methodical programmer – so it could be worthwhile to at least look at the plug-in source code.
I’m glad I did. Not only did it showed it handled 11 of 12 question types but also that the code was clear and easy to follow. Therefore a detailed evaluation was conducted by performing unit tests. Kudos goes to Jean-Michel Védrine for his outstanding plugin.
Results
11 of 12 question types were converted:
- Converted: Multiple Choice, Multiple Answer, True False, Fill in the blank, Multiple Blanks, Multiple Answers, Multiple Dropdowns/Cloze, Matching Question, Numerical, Essay Question, File Upload.
- Not Converted: Formula
Bugs
- The Formula/Calculated question conversion is not implemented. Workaround: Manually recreate these questions.
- Questions in Canvas ‘Grouped questions’ were not recognised. They appear as sections in the QTI xml. Workaround: strip the <section> and <selection_ordering> tags from the Canvas QTI XML.
- Essay Question: Missing Field ‘General’ answer comment. Workaround: Manually fix
- File Type: Missing field ‘General Feedback’. Workaround: Manually fix.
- Canvas Question Points are not transferred. It was not identified whether this was a Canvas export problem or a plugin problem.
- Images were not imported – absolute links or relative links. Workaround: manually fix.
Other issues found
- Canvas XML format sometimes exports encoded HTML with line breaks. This stops the Canvas import process.
- Images
can’t be imported with this methodology. They have to be reinserted
manually through Moodle UI or through manual hacking of XML code.
Testing Methodology
Two quizzes were prepared which included:
- One quiz was media rich. The same media was used in every possible field.
- One quiz was without any media in any field
- Both quizzes had one question of each type
- Both quizzes used the same question, answers and distractors.
Both were exported to separate Canvas QTI files. Jean-Michel’s plugin was installed on a test server hosting Moodle 3.5.
- Both files were imported using the Canvas QTI importer plugin: https://github.com/jmvedrine/moodle-qformat_canvas.
- Both QTI files were imported into separate categories. A new quiz was created for each.
The following checks were made:
- question function
- fields were checked for completeness
- formatting closely compared between Canvas and Moodle quizzes.
- comparison to original Canvas quiz.
Test Files
Attached are the test files, including the original Canvas Export QTI, Results (XLSX) and the Moodle Export XML.:
CANVAS_QTI_IMPORT_UNIT_TEST_FILES.zip
Conclusion
This plug-in is a cracker – it has saved Project Bob.
RE: VIABILITY: Yes it works to a very high standard. It’s a superior solution compared to any other approach – including commercial options.
RE: BUGS:The minor bugs could be quickly corrected with little development effort. More significant coding effort would be required to add image handling (highly valuable) and the Formula/Calculated question type conversion (valuable). 1 Feb update: see the Github project for all reported issues.
