Canvas Quiz Generator: Make Canvas Quizzes and Tests from Any PDF or Course File

How questions actually get into Canvas

This is the part that trips people up, so it is worth being precise. Instructure's own instructor guide puts it plainly: "You can easily import quizzes from programs that create QTI files. If a program does not create QTI files, it cannot be imported into Canvas." Canvas supports QTI 1.2 and 2.1, and Instructure's guide names Respondus 4.0 as a tool that exports QTI packages. Everything else is copy and paste or a conversion step. Here is what works.

PDFQuiz gives you the finished questions and a separate answer key as a Word document, a PDF, or a tab-separated text file you can open in Excel. From there the questions are yours to paste into the Canvas editor or run through the QTI converter your campus prefers. Generate questions from your own course file and see the output first.

Who uses a Canvas quiz generator

Canvas is the LMS on most US college campuses and in a lot of K-12 districts. The people who get the most out of a question generator are the ones who teach from documents they wrote or selected themselves.

Teaching on a different platform? There is a matching workflow for the Moodle quiz generator and the Blackboard test generator, or build assignments with the Google Classroom quiz maker.

Canvas quiz generator questions, answered

How do I create a Canvas quiz from a PDF?

Upload the PDF to a quiz generator, let it write the questions from that document, then move the finished questions into Canvas. Canvas itself has no way to read a PDF and turn it into questions, so the writing step happens outside Canvas. Once you have the questions and answer key, you either paste them into the Canvas quiz editor or import them as a QTI package.

Can you import quiz questions into Canvas?

Yes. Canvas natively imports quizzes and questions from QTI packages uploaded as a .zip file. Classic Quizzes exports and imports QTI 1.2. In New Quizzes you can import a QTI package to create a new quiz or to load questions into an item bank, though a QTI import cannot modify a quiz that already exists.

What file format does Canvas use to import quizzes?

Canvas uses QTI, uploaded as a .zip package, as its native quiz import format. Classic Quizzes exports as QTI 1.2. Canvas does not natively accept a Word document, a PDF, or a plain CSV of questions, which is why instructors either paste questions into the quiz editor or run them through a converter that produces a QTI zip.

Can I import a Word document into Canvas quizzes?

Not directly. Canvas has no built-in Word to quiz import, so a .docx file cannot be uploaded as a quiz on its own. Instructors typically copy the questions from the Word file into the Canvas quiz editor, or use a third-party DOCX to QTI converter first. Several of these converters have been shared in the Canvas community.

Does Canvas have an AI quiz generator built in?

Canvas does not read your course documents and write questions for you as a standard feature. The quiz editor is a place to enter questions, not to generate them from a reading. That is the gap a quiz generator fills: it reads your own PDF, slides, or notes and drafts the questions, then you review them and put them into Canvas.

What is the difference between Classic Quizzes and New Quizzes for importing?

Both accept QTI packages, but they behave differently. Classic Quizzes exports and imports QTI 1.2 and is commonly used to move quizzes between Canvas courses. New Quizzes can import a QTI package to create a brand-new quiz or to fill an item bank, but it will not merge an import into an existing quiz, so plan to import first and edit after.