Question Bank Repository

[don_bryn]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Question Banks. If you create a bank of questions in a sandbox course and bookmark those banks, then you can use them in any course. But you cannot then copy those quizzes to any other course because the links to question banks are lost.  In order to use question banks in various courses, you have to copy the question banks from course to course along with the quizzes.  If you later want to update questions, you will have to update them in EVERY course that uses that bank.  This defeats the whole purpose of having BANKS.

There should be a central repository for banks.  OR when quizzes are copies among courses, the links to banks should be carefully checked to maintain links to the correct banks.

Comments from Instructure

This idea was completed with general availability of Quizzes.Next.  You can find more information about the overall project in the Quizzes.Next User Group.‌

• Quizzes.Next is now available for all paid accounts.
• Quizzes.Next documentation will live in the Quizzes.Next User Group until July 14, 2018. On July 14, 2018, all of the documentation will be moved to the Canvas Guides in the Canvas Instructor Guide or Canvas Student Guide. 
• Quizzes.Next updates will be included in the Canvas Release Notes. This includes new features, updated features, and relevant fixed bugs. New and updated features will be deployed to Quizzes.Next near the same time as the Canvas release. Fixed bugs may be deployed at any time.

[khooper]

Don is referring to his own courses that use the same testbank across semesters/courses, not other faculty courses.

[khooper]

"I knew that if I edited a quiz, only students who had not started the quiz would be able to see changes.  Any student who had even opened the quiz would only see the original.."

Don, I am new to Canvas and have just discovered this problem. We migrated from Blackboard where, if you found a problem in your testbank, you could edit the testbank (to clarify a question, change the answer, give partial credit for a wrong answer) and regrade all quiz attempts so far. I can't seem to do this with Canvas. When I edit the testbank, the student who alerted me about the problem can't see the correction I've made because they've already opened their quiz. Perhaps new test-takers can (if they get that same question). You seem to have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, so do you have a solution for this?

[don_bryn]

The only solution so far is to try to get people to vote for a better implementation of question banks. 

For now If I have a huge course, I copy question banks with the other content.  I've still had some issues, and if I find an error I just update it in the original sandbox bank and let the current semester ride the way it is, usually not grading whatever question I was having an issue with.  I'm just not going to spend more time fixing the same question over and over when I'm so busy with teaching.  Doing it this way, I remember to never copy from a course that went live, but always from my sandboxes.

IF you have a student already starting a quiz and then you edit it, the student has to submit the quiz, then you give another attempt, and then they can see the new version of the quiz.  Students have to re-answer questions, and NOT really very ethical for a quiz for either the student or yourself, but it accomplishes what you need.

It IS possible to regrade a question (at least sometimes).  I don't completely understand why Canvas gives me the option to regrade sometimes.   Maybe someone else can answer that question.

[garth]

Thanks for the clarification.

My concern, as I look more deeply into how we can use Canvas data for accreditation review and reporting, is data integrity.

Perhaps part of the answer is to keep a revision history of question updates, so the version of the question can be associated with previous test/quiz results, i.e. tests/quizzes that were taken in previous semesters.  This would allow for maintaining the integrity of historic data.

The next problem is who owns the root question bank?

When you say "not other faculty courses", I am not sure that works in my case.

We have faculty teaching the same course, asking for course copies from one semester to the next, and a course can be copied to multiple faculty.

How do you handle one instructor changing a question in a way that was not intended by another instructor?

At what point do you clone the question bank and transfer ownership?  This could be tricky if you are pulling courses from the SIS and copying prior to faculty assignment.

All I'm saying is, this does not appear to be a simple solution.  If Canvas decides to work on this, I'm confident they will think it through very carefully.

[don_bryn]

I just want question banks that work for all of MY courses.  They should be accessible from any of my courses, like my files.  If I were to share them with another instructor then they would need to be COPIED to that teacher's account at which point they become responsible for any changes they want to make.  They become THEIR question banks.

[garth]

Ah, so you want user account level question banks, not course question banks?

I get it, so when a course is copied to another faculty member, Canvas could add a new course copy error message to say the question banks are broken and need to be recreated.

The other faculty member could ask you for a copy of your questions, which could be handled through import/export.

Then the tests/quizzes simply need to be re-seeded.

That makes sense, thank you.

[scain]

What a nail-biter!  @don_bryn ​, even if this doesn't reach the 100 vote threshold I believe the problems will be addressed in the new Quizzing engine. Deactivated user​ talked about cascading question updates into banks and across courses in his InstructureCon Session.

[Gina_Smith]

I have been asked to link this suggestion to this idea:

https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/6144?commentID=59340&et=notification.mention#comment-59340

so they can close it.

[don_bryn]

Another reason we need this.

I have been forced to copy banks course-to-course this semester.   Now when I want to create a quiz and link to a question bank, I see multiple copies of the same bank and there's no way to tell which course I'm linking to.   So then I have to open up every course that uses that question bank (or a copy) and make sure they are unbookmarked.  THEN I can go back and link to the proper question.

Takes too long.   Too confusing.

[jsparks]

Hello Team,

As we continue to explore the item bank feature set for the Canvas Studio: Modern Quizzing Engine , we will look into how we can best accommodate this idea.  Thank you for the idea!  We intend to entirely overhaul item banks for the better.

Kind regards,

Jason