In this article we will go over how to create and add questions to a question bank. A question bank is a course level repository that allows you to create and store questions that you can later add to quizzes. A commonly used setup for the question bank is to create categories to put your questions in to help keep everything organized and easy to find. Faculty will sometimes base their categories on the exam itself or they will base it on the topic of the questions inside of it. For example, an Exam 1 category will have all exam one questions inside of it or a Human Body category will have all questions that relate to human anatomy.
For a detailed tutorial on how to set a question bank up, check out the following YouTube video:
1. To access the question bank, navigate to the Course Admin Settings bar at the top and click the More menu. From there select Question Bank.
2. Inside your question bank, you will see your default category at the top of the page. This is where all of the questions are stored by default unless you designate a different category for the questions to go in. The number inside of the parenthesis will indicate how many questions are stored within that particular category.
3. For the purpose of this article, we are going to create a brand new category. In the upper left corner, click the Questions drop down menu and choose Categories
4. Press Add Category.
5. The parent category at the top can remain there unless you have another category that you created previously that you would like this one to be stored within ( like a sub category.) Give your category a name. Press Add Category
6. I have created the Disney Trivia Tutorial category. Notice you can see it there on the list of categories with a 0 next to indicating no questions have been added.
7. Now it is time to create questions to put inside of that category. From the drop down menu, you can choose Questions to get back to the previous screen, or you can access the question bank from the More menu as you did before.
8. The first thing we want to do when we get to our question screen is to select the category that we are working in from the Category menu at the top. I am going to select our Disney Trivia Tutorial category.
9. Click Create a New Question.
10. There are multiple kinds of question types that you can choose from. In this article, we will go over multiple choice and true/false, but feel free to test out the other question types to see if any of them work for you. From this menu, I am going to choose multiple choice.
Creating a Multiple Choice Question
1. The first thing it asks for is a question name. Keep in mind, this is NOT the question itself. It is the name you are giving that question so that you are able to differentiate it from others in the same category.
2. In the Question text box, this is where you are going to write the question itself.
3. Next to question status, you can indicate if this question is ready to include as an available question for an exam. If it isn't you can set it to draft.
4. You can set whether or not the question has one or multiple answers and if you want to shuffle the choices for that question. Please note, if you do choose to shuffle your choices, this isn't shuffling the questions themselves, it is only shuffling the answers. Keep this in mind when you are generating answer choices for your questions. For example, you would not want to shuffle the choices and include an answer like "Both A and D," since A and D could be different for each student.
5. In the Answers section, this is where you will put in the available answer choices for this question. For incorrect answers, write the choice in the text box and leave the Grade box marked as None. For the correct answer, write the choice in the text box and under the Grade menu, choose 100% if that is the only answer for this question.
6. Press Save Changes
7. The question will now appear in your category. Notice how the 0 in the parenthesis has now changed to a 1 to indicate the amount of questions inside of it.
Creating a True/False Question
1. Click Create a New Question
2. From the Question Type menu, choose True/False
3. Give your question a name in the Question name box. Remember this is NOT the question itself. It is the name you are giving that question so that you are able to differentiate it from others in the same category.
4. Write the question in the Question Text section.
5. Choose whether or not you want the status to be ready or draft.
6. Next to Correct Answer, choose whether the question is true or false.
7. Save the changes
8. The question will now appear in your category. Notice how the 1 in the parenthesis has now changed to a 2 to indicate the amount of questions inside of it.
Question Bank Features
With Moodle 4.0, there have been some improvements to the question bank that we will go over in this section.
Status
You can change the status of a question based on whether or not it is ready to use. If a question is ready to use on a quiz, choose Ready from the drop down menu. If a question is not ready for use on a quiz, choose Draft from the drop down menu. This will remove this question as an option when it comes time to add questions to the quiz.
Version History
Any time you make a change to a question inside of your question bank, a new version is created. Moodle will always choose the most recent, Ready question as an available option when it comes time to add questions to a quiz. You do, however, have the ability to add whichever version of a question that you like when you are setting up the quiz.
1. To edit your question, click Edit on the Actions menu and choose Edit Question.
2. Once you have made your changes, make sure to save them. You should notice that there is a v2 label next to the question which signifies that this is the second version of that question.
3. If you would like to view the history of this question, click the Edit on the Actions menu for that item, and choose History. You will now see all of the versions that have been created for that question.
Comments
This feature allows you to leave comments on your questions. These comments are only visible to those with instructor privileges on the course or admin privileges. Students cannot see them. Comments are also version specific so if you leave a comment on Version 2 of a question, the same comment will not show up on Version 1 or any other versions that the question may have.
1. To add a comment, click the number under the Comments section next to your question. This number will start at 0, but as you add more comments, that number will change.
2. Write your comment in the box and press Add Comment.
3. Once you save it, you will see the comment show up under the question.
Usage
This will show you the number of quizzes that this question is currently being used on. It will also provide which quiz it is, a link for you to access it, and how many attempts have been made on this question. Keep in mind that statistics like this should be taken with a grain of salt. For example, if you told Moodle to randomly choose a question for a test and this was one of them, some students will get it while others do not. So if your number of attempts do not match up with the number of participants, there could be more than one reason why.
1. To access the usage for a question, click the number under the usage section.
2. To access the quizzes where this question is being used, simply click the link for that quiz and it will take you there.
Facility Index & Discriminative Efficiency
If you want to get an idea of how your question is performing across the course and between semesters, you could use Facility Index and Discriminative Efficiency as a guide to do that. They can help to figure out if a question is too easy or too hard. For example, maybe you have students who have done well on the exam, but can't seem to get a specific question correct or alternatively maybe there are students that are doing poorly on the exam, but seem to get the question correct.
For more information on these analytics, check out the video above.
Adding Questions to a Quiz from your Question Bank
Once you are finished creating questions, you are now ready to add those questions to a quiz.
1. Click on the quiz that you would like to add questions to.
2. If you haven't added any questions yet, click Add Question. If you've already added questions previously, and you are coming back to add more, click Questions to take you back to the correct place.
3. On the far right, click the Add button and choose from question bank
4. Choose the category that you are pulling your questions from.
5. Check off the boxes next to all of the questions that you want to add on your quiz. If you want to select all of the questions, choose the text box above the first question.
6. Press Add Selected Questions to Quiz
Your questions have now been added and your quiz is ready to go. As mentioned above, Moodle will always choose the most recent version of a quiz question to add to your test. You can choose which version you would like though if the latest isn't your preference. From the Always Latest drop down menu, choose the version that you would like.
