Moodle: Quiz - Question Bank

Contents

• Adding questions from the question bank
• Managing the question bank
  • Course-wide vs Quiz-specific Categories
  • Accessing the question bank menu
  • Adding categories
  • Moving questions between categories
  • Editing questions in the question bank

Introduction

The question bank is a useful tool for organizing and reusing quiz questions.This article will go over using the question bank to organize questions into categories and retrieve them while making a quiz.

Adding questions from the question bank

If you want to add a questions stored in the question bank to a quiz:

• Click on the quiz activity on the course page, and under the menu, select "Edit quiz"
• Click "Add", then choose either "from the question bank" or "a random question"
• "from the question bank" lets you pick specific questions from the question bank
  • Choose a category and either click the for one question or click the checkboxes beside one or more questions to add multiple at once
    • You may only add multiple questions from one category at a time.
• "a random question" adds spaces for randomly selected questions from a specific category. These questions will change for each attempt of the quiz
  • To add random questions from existing categories in the "Existing categories" tab
    • Select a category from the drop-down menu at the top, and choose whether you'd like to include questions from subcategories in the random draw
    • If you use tags, you can further specify with tag selection
    • Choose the amount of random questions to add
    • Click "Add random question"
  • To add random questions from a new category in the "New category" tab
    • Name your new category and select a parent category
    • Click "Create category and add random question"
      • This creates a new, empty category and a placeholder for random questions from this category. You will need to populate the new category with questions for a random question to appear. 

Managing the question bank

Course-wide vs. Quiz-specific Categories

Before addressing the question bank, it is important to distinguish between course-wide and quiz-specific categories:

• Course-wide categories and questions are accessible in all quizzes on your course page
  • When picking a category while creating a question, course-wide categories will be displayed under Course: [Your course name]
• Quiz-specific categories and questions are only accessible through their own quiz
  • For example: If you want to add a question in a quiz-specific category to a quiz from the question bank, this will only be possible in the original quiz; the category will not appear if you try to add the question to a different quiz
  • When picking a category while creating a question, quiz-specific categories will be displayed under Quiz: [Your quiz name]

Accessing the question bank menu

The best way to access the question bank is:

• Click on the quiz activity on the course page
• Under the menu, select "Question bank"

The question bank has four tabs:

• Questions: Lists questions under a given category and allows you to edit them
• Categories: Lists categories and allows you to edit/reorganize them
• Import: Allows you to import questions from a file into a category
• Export: Allows you to export a category as a file

Adding categories

To add a category to the question bank:

• Click on the Categories tab in the question bank menu
• Under "Add category", pick a parent category
  • The "top" category is the default if you want a top-level category
• Write any category info in the box
• Click the "Add category" button on the bottom  

Moving questions between categories

To move question from one category to another:

• Click on the Questions tab in the question bank menu
• In the "Select a category" drop-down menu, pick the category from which you want to move questions
• Below, you will see a list of questions with checkboxes for each. Click the checkboxes of the questions you want to move
• Under "With selected" at the bottom of the screen, pick the category to which you would like to move the selected questions using the drop-down menu
• Click "Move to > >"

Editing questions in the question bank

Under the Questions tab in the question bank, your questions for the selected category are listed at the bottom of the page. Each question has six different actions listed under "Edit":

• Edit question: Edit the content of the question
  • If this question exists in a quiz, it will change on the quiz side as well.
• Duplicate: Create a copy of the question.
  • After clicking duplicate, you will be brought to the editing screen of the copy. You may make changes to this copy before clicking "Save changes"/"Save changes and continue editing" at the bottom.
  • The copy will not be created until you save.
• Manage tags: Place site-wide tags onto your questions
• Preview: Check how the question will appear on a quiz to a student
• Delete: Delete the question
  • If the question is currently being used in a quiz, Moodle won't let you fully delete it- the question will be grayed-out in the question bank.
  • To delete a grayed-out question for good, remove all quiz uses of the question, then delete it again.
  • Grayed-out questions can be restored by clicking "Edit" once more and choosing "Restore"
• Export as Moodle XML: Export 1 single question into the Moodle XML format
  • To export several questions in a category, the export tab is useful

Questions?

Click on the Request Service button on the upper right of this page.

Acknowledgement 

Created by Aleksander Prasolov '24, Tue 2/8/22. Last modified by Carly Born, Tue 2/23/22.