Skip to main content

Exporting Quiz Questions to Your LMS (Canvas, Moodle, D2L Brightspace)

How to export your Blended Teaching quiz questions in Canvas QTI, Moodle XML, or D2L Brightspace format — and the situations where running a quiz natively in your LMS is the right choice.

Your questions are yours. Blended Teaching can export any quiz or question bank in a format your LMS imports natively — Canvas, Moodle, and D2L Brightspace.

For most classes, quizzing directly in Blended Teaching is the best experience: dynamic questions, instant student feedback, results analytics, and — in integrated Canvas and Blackboard courses — automatic grade sync. But there are a few situations where running an assessment natively in your LMS serves you better.

This guide covers:

  1. When to Consider Exporting

  2. How to Export a Quiz

  3. How to Export a Question Bank

  4. Importing Into Your LMS

  5. Which Question Types Export

1. When to Consider Exporting

There are four common scenarios where exporting is the right call.

1.1. You need proctoring your LMS handles natively

Blended Teaching quizzes can be proctored with Respondus LockDown Browser or Honorlock in integrated Canvas courses, and with Honorlock in Blackboard. If your course runs in Moodle or D2L Brightspace — or your university uses a different proctoring tool — export your questions and run the quiz natively in your LMS, where that proctoring tool can supervise it.

  • To see every proctoring option by LMS, click here.

1.2. You need grades directly in the Moodle or D2L gradebook

In integrated Canvas and Blackboard courses, quiz scores sync to your LMS gradebook automatically. Moodle and D2L Brightspace results live in Blended Teaching's Grades & Results page instead, and moving scores into the LMS gradebook is a manual step.

If your course needs scores to land in the Moodle or D2L gradebook automatically, running the quiz natively in the LMS does exactly that.

1.3. Your institution requires assessments to run in the LMS

Some departments require graded assessments to be delivered inside the LMS. Exporting lets you author and maintain your questions in Blended Teaching and deliver them wherever policy requires.

1.4. Sections merged into one Canvas course shell that need different due dates

This applies to one specific setup: several sections merged into a single integrated Canvas course shell that need different due dates for the same assessment. (If your sections each have their own separate Canvas shell, this doesn't apply — each shell syncs its own dates cleanly, and you can quiz in Blended Teaching as usual.) In the merged-shell case, only one due date can sync per assessment, so per-section dates are set in Canvas with a Blended Teaching end date as the hard cutoff. That's fully supported and works well (see Managing Due Dates for Different Sections). But it gets more involved as sections multiply, and more so if you're also proctoring. To keep dates and proctoring together in one place, export your questions and run the quiz natively in Canvas.

1.5. What changes when you run a quiz natively

  • The export is a snapshot. Later edits to the quiz in Blended Teaching don't update the copy in your LMS.

  • Results move to your LMS. Students take the quiz there, so attempts, results, and feedback appear in the LMS rather than in Blended Teaching.

  • Settings are re-applied. Points, attempts, and dates are configured in your LMS after import.

If none of these scenarios apply to your course, keep your quizzes in Blended Teaching — that's where your students get the richest experience. 🙌

2. How to Export a Quiz

To export a quiz:

  1. Go to the Quizzes tab and open the quiz.

  2. Click the three dots in the page header and select Export.

  3. Choose your format and click Export. The file downloads to your computer.

There are four formats to choose from:

  1. Canvas — Classic Quizzes QTI (.zip)

  2. Canvas — New Quizzes QTI (.zip)

  3. Moodle XML (.xml)

  4. D2L Brightspace (.zip)

Using Pools? A quiz export includes the questions added directly to the quiz. If your quiz draws its questions from pools, export the source question bank instead (next section) — or add the questions directly to a copy of the quiz and export that.

3. How to Export a Question Bank

To export one or more question banks:

  1. Go to the Question Banks tab.

  2. Check the boxes next to the banks you want to export.

  3. Click Export in the action bar at the bottom of the page.

  4. Choose Canvas — Classic Quizzes QTI or D2L Brightspace.

4. Importing Into Your LMS

Once you have your export file, import it in your LMS.

4.1. Canvas

  1. In your Canvas course, go to Settings → Import Course Content.

  2. Choose QTI .zip file and upload your export.

Classic Quizzes exports appear under Quizzes; New Quizzes exports import into New Quizzes and Item Banks.

4.2. Moodle

  1. In your Moodle course, go to Question bank → Import.

  2. Select Moodle XML format, upload the .xml file, and click Import.

Your questions land in the Moodle question bank, ready to add to a new Moodle quiz.

4.3. D2L Brightspace

  1. In Brightspace, go to Course Admin → Import/Export/Copy Components.

  2. Choose Import Components and upload the .zip.

Your questions appear in the Question Library, ready to add to a Brightspace quiz.

4.4. Blackboard

Blackboard courses use our full integration, including automatic grade sync, so exporting is rarely needed there. If you have a Blackboard scenario that calls for a natively run quiz, message our team and we'll help you find the right path.

5. Which Question Types Export?

Multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, and written answer questions export in every format.

Note: Formula (dynamic) questions are included in the Canvas QTI formats only. If your quiz relies on formula questions, review the imported quiz in Moodle or Brightspace before using it.

Not sure whether exporting is right for your course? Ask Blended AI in your Control Center or message our team — we're happy to help you choose.

Did this answer your question?