Allow admins to grant multiple users permissions for item banks in New Quizzes

[ken_i_mayer]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Currently, the item banks are viewable and editable ONLY by the user account that created them.

They are dead to anyone else, even if the person is the superuser admin.

This model is unsustainable for any serious institution with multiple instructors teaching the same courses semester after semester.

Can we please allow Canvas admins several powers:

• to see all the item banks in a particular course
• to grant multiple users permissions in item banks (just view, also view analytics, or also edit)
• to clone or export item banks (so two instructors can independently modify and customize their own banks, without undoing each other's edits)
• to set a course-wide permission, allowing by defaulr ANY instructor the right to edit the item banks for that course?

I can foresee the current user-based resulting in the an overwhelming and confounding number of item banks, so the api call for them should probably include another parameter to limit by course, subaccount, or current semester.

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-17373 .

[CraigOgden]

I like this idea. Everything mentioned above is great.

May I add to this suggestion. I suggest that there be School/District wide Item Banks. These banks should only be edited by the admin(s) that have permissions to edit them as mentioned above. If a school wide item bank, the admin might be one person or one person per department. If a district wide item bank, it might be one person (a lot of work for one person), or a group of people who understand each subject area.

The teachers who teach those subjects can then write tests and access directly those item banks. I am not talking about exporting and importing the item banks. I want there to be ONE item bank that only resides in one place that everyone who wants to can access it directly. This way if there are errors in the banks or questions that are added. EVERYONE will automatically see those changes or additions. There might be one Math item bank, one Biology item bank, one English and so on.

I think that teachers should still have their own item banks if they want. We as many of us do have common assessments that we as a school need to use.  If all of us have copies of these and we find errors or need to add or subtract from them then all of us have to make sure we have the updated version of the assessment.

This has worked very well with the past test generators I have used in the past. We always knew that the test we where giving was up to date and had lots of good questions. If there was an error we told the admin and it would be fixed for everyone. We didn't have to worry about telling all of the teachers (it has been up to 30 teachers in 6 different locations) using that test of the change.

If this needs to be a new idea I will add it.

[timothy_maw]

Yes, please something to remedy this situation is something we really need seeing as we have multiple instructors in all of courses.

[nelyon]

In addition to allowing admins to help a teacher "share" a bank, even better might be adding a field in the bank for the teacher to enter the username themselves of anyone else they want to share the bank with. Better still if this user level "share" feature allows the bank owner to specify if the collaborator can "view and copy" the bank or "edit the original".

[tim_kato]

Banks should be tied to the course, not the instructor. An instructor of a course can edit all assignments, grading, content, etc. Why should quizzes be managed through an entirely different architecture?

[Renee_Carney]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas 

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2019-08-17) .

[Renee_Carney]

 @ken_i_mayer  Thank You  for submitting this idea, as well as,  @cogden  Thank You ,  @timothy_maw  Thank You , nelyon Thank You , &  @tim_kato  Thank You  for your contributions. Your investment in this idea helped refine a feature which is now part of Canvas!