How do I view a quiz log for a student?

You can view quiz logs to view the status of your student quizzes. This feature is designed to help you investigate problems that a student may have in the quiz and gain insight into your quiz questions. Quiz logs are not intended to validate academic integrity or identify cheating for a quiz.

The quiz starts the log when students begin the quiz, so some logs may show that the quiz is in progress. If you gave the student multiple attempts for a quiz, the log will always show the most recent attempt by default. However, you can view any attempt within the log.

Each attempt will display timestamps and quiz action statuses in the quiz log.

If you are looking to investigate potential academic integrity or cheating concerns, we recommend that you first work with the academic affairs office, academic technology office, or other office charged with handling academic misconduct matters within your institution. They can share processes, guidelines, and approved institutional approaches for investigating academic integrity issues that may or may not occur in an online environment.

Notes:

  • Quiz logs should not be used to validate academic integrity or identify occurrences of cheating.
  • Quiz logs are only retained for six months.
  • Quiz Log Auditing is currently a course opt-in feature. To enable the link to view quiz logs, learn how to manage feature options in the course features lesson.
  • The quiz log may show Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks, Matching, Multiple Answers, and Multiple Dropdown questions as being answered at the beginning of the quiz. This action is generated by the autosave component within Canvas quizzes. If a student clicks to answer another question, the quiz will autosave all the questions and show them as being answered. Because of the autosave behavior, the quiz log does not include an accurate log for Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks, Matching, Multiple Answers, and Multiple Dropdown questions.

Open Quizzes

Open Quizzes

In Course Navigation, click the Quizzes link.

Open Quiz

Open Quiz

Click the name of a quiz.

Show Student Quiz Results

Show Student Quiz Results

Click the Options menu [1] and click the Show Student Quiz Results option [2].

Open Student Results

Open Student Results

Click the name of a student.

View Log

View Log

Click the View Log link.

View Session Information and Action Log

View Session Information and Action Log

View the session information and the action log for the quiz.

The session information shows the start date and time [1] for the attempt [2].

The action log for the specified attempt will display a status [3] and a timestamp [4] for each quiz action.

To refresh the quiz log, click the Refresh icon [5].

View Action Log Statuses

View Action Log Statuses

Each item in the action log contains a status.

Possible action log statuses include:

  • Viewed (and possibly read) a question [1] displays when a student is active on the quiz page, but has not answered the question.
  • Answered a question [2] displays when a student has answered the question. If questions are shown being answered multiple times, the student either changed their answer(s), or the answer was generated by the quiz autosave feature.
  • Stopped viewing the Canvas quiz-taking page [3] displays when a student navigates away from the quiz (closes the browser tab, opens a new browser tab, or navigates to a different program).
  • Resumed [4] displays when the student has returned to the quiz.

View Question Answers

View Question Answers

To view responses to a question, click the link to the quiz question number.

View Response to Question

You can view the number of times the question was answered, as well as each specific attempt at answering the question [1].

To view answers for another quiz question, click the question number [2]. To return to the log, click the Back to log link [3].

View Autosave Answers

View Autosave Answers

The log may show Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks, Matching, Multiple Answers, and Multiple Dropdown questions as being answered at the beginning of the quiz. This action is generated by the autosave component within Canvas quizzes. If a student clicks to answer another question, the quiz will autosave all the questions and show them as being answered. Because of the autosave behavior, the quiz log does not include an accurate log for Fill-in-Multiple-Blanks, Matching, Multiple Answers, and Multiple Dropdown questions.

When viewing the question answers in the log, the question will show a null or no answer response for the autosaved answer attempt.  

View Additional Attempts

View Additional Attempts

If the student has more than one quiz attempt, the log always shows the last attempt. Prior attempts can be viewed by clicking the number of the attempt.