Moodle: Quiz - Question Bank

Overview

The question bank is a useful tool for organizing and reusing quiz questions. This article will explain organizing questions into categories and adding questions to a quiz from the question bank.

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 in your course
  • 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
  • When picking a category while creating a question, quiz-specific categories will be displayed under Quiz: [Your quiz name]

Accessing the question bank menu

To access the question bank:

1. Click your quiz on the course page
2. Click the Question bank tab

The question bank has a drop down menu in the top left with four options:

• 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:

1. In the question bank menu, click on the drop down in the top left and select Categories
2. Click Add category
3. Pick a parent category
4. Enter a Category name and Category info
   • Students will not be able to see this information
5. Click the Add category button on the bottom

Moving questions between categories

To move question from one category to another:

1. In the question bank menu, click on the drop down in the top left and select Questions
2. In the Select a category drop-down menu, pick the category containing the question(s) you want to move
3. Select the questions you want to move by clicking their checkboxes
4. Click With selected > Move to…
5. Choose a category, then click the Move to button

Editing questions in the question bank

1. In the question bank menu, click on the drop down in the top left and select Questions
2. Under the Actions column, click Edit next to any question to access edit functions. 

Below are the most important edit options:

• 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 or Save changes and continue editing at the bottom.
• 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 will gray-out the question. Remove the question from all quizzes to fully delete it
  • Grayed-out questions can be restored by clicking Edit > Restore

Adding questions from the question bank

To add specific questions stored in the question bank to a quiz:

1. Click your quiz on the course page
2. Click the Questions tab
3. Click Add > from the question bank
4. Choose a category and select one or more questions
5. Click Add selected questions to the quiz

Another option is adding random question slots which draw from a question bank category. A random question is chosen for each attempt of the quiz. To add a random question:

1. Click your quiz on the course page
2. Click the Questions tab
3. Click Add > a random question
4. The Existing category tab creates questions that will draw from a previously made category. 
   1. Choose a category and the amount of questions to add.
   2. Click Add random question
5. The New category tab creates a question that will draw from an empty category to be filled later
   1. Name the category and pick a parent category
   2. Click Create category and add random question

Questions?

Submit a Moodle Help ticket (opens in new tab).

Acknowledgement 

Created by Aleksander Prasolov '24, 2/8/22. Last modified by Sam Johnson-Lacoss '24, 11/7/23.