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How should students record answers to formative questions WITHIN a Canvas page?

KenJohnson1

It is common in Higher Education for academics to ask formative questions of students within the text of pages of their Canvas course.

However, Canvas doesn't provide an inline tool where students can record an answer to these questions so I suspect many students just "gloss over" these important formative assessments. Occasionally the academic links out to the discussion or quiz tool, but this is a bad UX.

We have previously used the H5P "Essay" activity, which can be embedded on the page and in addition to allowing students to write an answer on the page that is saved, also allows the teacher to see a report of who has answered the question and what the students wrote.

Is there any other solution (from a 3rd party or on the roadmap)?

I see a "Notebook" feature has just been introduced (Canvas Release Notes (2026-07-18) - Instructure Community) but this works differently and doesn't collate all the student answers.

The same question was asked back in 2022 but without an adequate answer: [ARCHIVED] Embed Text Entry Box in a Canvas page. - Instructure Community.

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Accepted answers

Hildi_Pardo

@KenJohnson1 — this functionality isn't available now, but I believe it's coming soon! We saw it demoed at Instructurecon this summer. (very exciting!). Here it is on the roadmap: https://community.instructure.com/en/categories/canvas-collaborative-roadmap?portalCard=WM_NTKmXGN7g3NlzEnd3lyeGjds

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Chris_Hofer

Hello @KenJohnson1 …

Have you considered using New Quizzes for this kind of formative assessment in your course rather than putting your content on a regular content page and then linking to a discussion or quiz? If you were to use New Quizzes, there is a specific question type called "Stimulus Question" where you can display text on one side of the screen and then questions on the other size…all without having to create a separate link to another part of the course. If you take a look at the bottom of the Guide that I linked, you'll see a couple screenshot examples of Declaration of Independence content alongside questions that could be asked about the content. Since I can't really see the content of your course, it's difficult to be 100% sure, but I do think this would be a good alternative for you that you might want to try out. If you have a "sandbox" course within Canvas, you could at least try out the New Quiz stimulus question type to see if would work for your needs…before you would implement it in your own course.

Anyway, I wanted to throw that idea out there for you to consider. I hope it helps in some way.

KenJohnson1

Thanks for the suggestion @Chris_Hofer. I'm really looking for something where students can respond to a question WITHIN the context of the page. I don't want students leaving the page to do an activity and I don't want to move the content to a quiz. In either case it creates an undesirable UX.

Typically we use H5P activities embedded on the page to test students' understanding of the content. For example, below is an activity on a page using the H5P Essay activity type (the white box). There is some content above this formative activity and content below.

I think H5P is our only option for now but I've made a roadmap suggestion that Instructure look at this.

Chris_Hofer

Hi again, @KenJohnson1 …

Is there a reason why you don't want to move the content into a New Quiz? I really do think this would work well for you. Instead of creating a content page that just houses the text, you create a New Quiz and put the content in there. You don't need to have a separate page with all the text and then link to the quiz because the New Quiz will hold all that info. This way, you can collect all the answers from your students via the Canvas Gradebook.

Just for fun, I made a brand new New Quiz in my own sandbox course. I tried to recreate the interface you've shown from H5P. Although I didn't include all the text from your screenshot in the question details, you'll get a good idea of how it looks.

Here's an example where the content appears above the area for students to respond (similar to your screenshot):

And here is an example of where I've changed a setting for the stimulus question so that the content appears on the left side while the question appears on the right.

I would still encourage you to give the stimulus question type a try in a New Quiz within your sandbox course. (Or, you could create a New Quiz in your actual course and leave it unpublished until you are ready to release it to your students. That would work, too.)

I hope this will be of some help to you.

KenJohnson1

I don't want to have lots of one question quizzes in the course, and it creates lots of additional links on the module page, and it would create lots of Pages with very little content on them.

Imagine an existing single topic page, with an introductory paragraph, several paragraphs of text, images and embedded videos with a concluding paragraph. If I have two separate questions that I want students to reflect on in that topic page, using the Canvas quizzes I now have five links in the module page instead of one (page, quiz, page, quiz, page). Repeating this process in each of the, say, 10 topics in the course creates a lot of "noise" and a lot of "Next" clicking.

What I'd like is to be able to embed your first screenshot into the single Canvas Page that I've created for the topic.

Chris_Hofer

@KenJohnson1 …

Thanks for providing that extra bit of information. Unfortunately, embedding the New Quiz interface within a Canvas content page is not possible. In my two screenshots, essentially what I was attempting to show was your content page either at the top or the left-hand side of the page, and then the question(s) below or to the right respective…just within the New Quiz interface instead of a regular content page.

I'm not sure if this matters in your scenario or not, but I should have mentioned that you can have multiple questions for a stimulus type question using either of the screenshot examples I shared earlier. So, you could fill your stimulus with several paragraphs, images, embedded videos, etc., and then you could have multiple questions at the bottom or on the right side of the screen. You aren't limited to just one question per quiz. Apologies for not mentioning that earlier.

My other thought is (and again, I don't know if this would really apply to your scenario, but I'll mention it anyway), you could have multiple stimulus question in the same New Quiz. For example, your first stimulus could have a bunch of paragraphs for students to read, and then you could have three questions for them to answer just about those paragraphs. Then, in the same New Quiz, you could create an additional stimulus, but this time the stimulus content would be an embedded video. Then, you could include an additional three questions for students to answer specifically about the video they just watched. All of that exists in one New Quiz.

After giving the New Quiz option a try in your sandbox course, if that still isn't what you're looking for, as you said H5P might be the way to go. I know that there are some connections to the Canvas Gradebook with H5P, but I don't know the extent of what is sent other than scores to the Gradebook. (This is my recollection, at least. It's been a while since I've used H5P.)

One other option I thought of was using some of the tools provided in the DesignPLUS sidebar, but your school would have to have purchased DesignPLUS from Cidi Labs and integrated it into Canvas. The DesignPLUS sidebar does allow you to put quiz-type questions into regular content pages, but the main difference is that responses are not stored in any way within the Canvas Gradebook. Rather, instructors can see student responses anonymously through a different interface so they can get an overall idea of how students are answering the questions. But, if you don't have DesignPLUS integrated with your Canvas environment, you wouldn't have access to this.

Hope this helps in some way. Take care, and be well.

KenJohnson1

Thanks @Chris_Hofer. Building all/most of the content within the quiz is an interesting option. I've never tried to do it.

We have DesignPlus integrated but it doesn't have an essay type question and they're not planning on adding it, from what they've told me.

Thanks for all your correspondence.

Hildi_Pardo

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Chris_Hofer

Hi @KenJohnson1 …

We have DesignPlus integrated but it doesn't have an essay type question and they're not planning on adding it, from what they've told me.

Yeah, I have been working on a course over the past month, and I actually used the DesignPLUS tool "Fill in the Blank" to substitute for an essay question on some pages I was building. It doesn't give you a large space to type text, but it could potentially work for your needs. You'd have to try it out in your own course if you wanted to do something like that. I was going to link to a short video for you from Cidi Labs' website, but part of their site with the videos isn't working right now.

KenJohnson1

Thanks @Hildi_Pardo. I look forward to seeing this when it's released.

Hildi_Pardo

Me, too!

StefanieTate7

Hi @KenJohnson1, I'm not sure if you've already submitted an official feature request to Cidi Labs for an essay/reflection interactive exercise in DesignPLUS, but I went ahead and put one in with the team :) You can submit your own request at cidilabs.com/support to receive status updates via email.

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