After four years of buying Scantrons, I’m formally calling out all the teachers who forced me to spend $2 on the pointless pieces of paper.

We have Canvas for a reason, and all professors should be using it. I’m not just writing this because I want my own professors to use Canvas –using Canvas for all multiple choice tests would save the school time and money in the long-run.

The School of Nursing seems to be more on board with the system than most departments. In nursing classes, teachers use Canvas for most tests, even long ones with 50-100 questions. This allows students to see their grades immediately, which can be helpful if the teacher doesn’t have time to grade tests immediately.

Some professors give cumulative tests or reuse test questions. Because Canvas stores the questions even after the test ends, students can look back at previous tests without having to keep pieces of paper.

Professors who use Canvas for tests save the time it takes to create a test key, input the answers in the Scantron machine, scan all the Scantrons and then input the grades to Canvas. If they put tests on Canvas, they eliminate the need for all the other steps.

Finally, using Canvas for tests saves paper, and it saves money. A 100-question test can be 5 or 6 pages long, and that’s a lot of pages to waste, especially for large classes. It also saves students the money to buy Scantrons. I’ve been lucky enough to only need one pack of Scantrons per semester, but some students have to buy more. That’s money that could be spent elsewhere for students –or at Tea2Go for me.

The university pays for Canvas and for full-time tech support for faculty. Why isn’t every professor taking advantage of this?

Canvas allows for essays, multiple choice and even short-answer formats. Every professor should be using it instead of Scantrons. To all my professors who still use Scantrons: you know who you are.