Cornell supports two platforms that can be used to provide online quizzes and exams: Canvas and Gradescope. Canvas, Cornell’s learning management system, has a quiz/exam tool (Canvas New Quizzes) that can be used for fully online exams. Gradescope, an assessment platform that is usually used to collect and grade hand-written problem sets, can also be used as a fully online quizzing/exam tool (Gradescope Online Assignments). Gradescope can also be integrated into an instructor’s Canvas course or it can be used independently from Canvas. The chart below shows a comparison of these two tools. We invite you to contact us at canvas@cornell.edu to discuss which of these tools might best meet your needs.
| Feature/Function | Gradescope Online Assignments | Canvas New Quizzes |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple Choice, True/False, Short Answer/Free Response/Essay, Multiple Response/Multiple Answer/Select All, Fill in the Blank, Multiple Blanks, Matching Questions | ✔1 | ✔ |
| Categorization, Hot Spot, Ordering, Dropdown Questions | ✘ | ✔ |
| Images can be uploaded to questions | ✔ | ✔ |
| File Upload from students | ✔ | ✔ |
| File Download to students | ✔ | ✔ |
| Question/Item banks | ✘ | ✔ |
| Faculty can upload/submit on behalf of student | ✔ | ✔ |
| Multiple attempts | ✔ | ✔ |
| Due and availability date differentiation (for groups or individuals) | ✔2 | ✔ |
| Time limit and countdown timer | ✔ | ✔ |
| Time extension for individual students | ✔ | ✔ |
| Group submissions | ✔ | ✘ |
| Annotation and comments | ✔ | ✔ |
| On-the-fly rubric creation | ✔ | ✘ |
| Automatic retroactive point change of rubric items | ✔ | ✘ |
| Anonymous grading | ✔ | ✔ |
| Grade by question instead of by student | ✔ | ✘ |
| Simultaneous grading by multiple graders | ✔ | ✘ |
| Use independently from Canvas | ✔ | ✘ |
| Canvas Gradebook integration | ✔ | ✔ |
| Lockdown browser | ✘ | ✘ |
1 Fill in the Blank, Multiple Blanks, and Matching Questions are available through short answer input field 2 available via the Extensions feature
Additional Resources
- CTI Resource: Getting Started with Gradescope
- CTI Resource: Getting Started with Canvas New Quizzes
- CTI Resource: Comparison of Quiz Tools: Canvas Quizzes and New Quizzes
