Can I share a question bank?

[jeffrey_peang-m]

Is it possible to share a question bank? I would like to collaborate with another teacher to create a common question bank for our courses, but cannot see how to do this.

[kmeeusen]

Hi  @jeffrey_peang-m  

There are several ways that this can be accomplished, but I think the easiest would be for you to ask your Canvas Admin to create a shared sandbox (empty Canvas shell) for you and the other instructor. You could then copy the question bank into that shell work on it together, and then draw items from that bank to use in quizzes in your respective courses.

Kelley

[roxanne_bruce-b]

Is ADMIN setup of the sandbox necessary?  Can't one teacher set up their own sandbox and then invite the other teachers/instructors to join their course?

[lturner2]

Greetings, Jeff,

I can assure you that I would try out Kelley's option. It is often most clever (and simple) to do a total course-transfer where you can pick and choose from the content.

One other option you could choose is;

Settings (on the left hand menu) - Export Course Content (on the right hand menu)

On the next page you can change the type from Course to Quiz and you will see a list of the created quizzes. You can then export them.

One way you could do this is to create a temp quiz, select all questions, then use this export option above. It may or may not be more time consuming than Kelley's option depending on how many quizzes, and how quickly you can redo the quizzes, but I believe if you have a few options to consider, you can find which may cause you less time and better results.

[Robbie_Grant]

 @jeffrey_peang-m ,

Were you able to find an answer to your question? I am going to go ahead and mark this question as answered because there hasn't been any more activity in a while so I assume that you have the information that you need. If you still have a question about this or if you have information that you would like to share with the community, by all means, please do come back and leave a comment.  Also, if this question has been answered by one of the previous replies, please feel free to mark that answer as correct.

Robbie

[ethomas48]

I have a similar, perhaps not exactly the same, question. I don't want to share banks, I want to have a common bank from which multiple courses that I teach pull from. I teach the same course in multiple sections with staggered start dates. When I move to a new edition of the text, I spend time "cleaning" the question banks, as quizzes are taken, by removing poorly worded or overly confusing questions from the bank and giving the poor student to happened to get that question credit for it. So now in one course I have a partial set of "clean" test banks that I'd like to use in the other sections. How can I share these so that they can replace the questions banks already in the second/third course and so that I don't have to re-create the quizzes in those other sections?

In summary, is there a "master" test bank concept that I'm not aware of OR is there a way for me to replace all of the questions in a test bank so that the linkage between that bank and the quiz remains intact?

Please advise if I need to start a new thread/question on this.

[lph]

Hi  @ethomas48 ‌

I have a course designated “Physics Questions” and it has the question banks. Each question bank is bookmarked and I can then pull questions when in a different course. Works like a charm. 

[ethomas48]

Thank you, Layne! I've also since learned about Bookmarking question banks which solves this problem.

[ethomas48]

Hi Layne,

I established a set of "master" test banks in what I'm calling my "master" course, booked-marked them, and used them in quizzes in a new course. This worked very well. But when I copied that course to second instance (second section), all of the links to the bookmarked banks went away and the quiz malfunctioned for the students. Here's what I see when I edit the quiz:

Move To...This element is a more accessible alternative to drag & drop reordering. Press Enter or Sp...

Group 5 5ed

 Pick 10 questions, 1.0 pts per question

Collapse Group Add Question to this Group Edit Group Details Delete Group

 This question group is set to pick more questions than are available.

I am now editing each quiz and re-linking each one to the bookmarked question banks. So this bookmarking has not solved my problem, frustratingly.

 - Erin

[pecchiog]

Hello all. I'm new as a Canvas designer and admin at my school here in Hershey PA. To me, the question banks feature based on what I'm reading sounds very unilateral. As in, Someone can create questions at an admin level which enables teachers to then draw from those questions. But...the rub seems to be that those teachers cannot add questions to the same account. The solution from what I'm reading on here seems to be (exporting is not going to work for us as described):

1. Teachers can add other teachers as "TAs" who can access the same questions and specific course created question banks. They could then simply add and pull from them.

2. The most realistic option: create a course called "English Department" and make all the English/Language Arts teachers, instructors in the course. No students, no grades--but teachers could create question banks by grade level>course level>unit/topic level. They could then contribute and pull.

Am I correct or just speaking in Esperanto, Keith? 

[lph]

Hi  @pecchiog ‌

Yes. You can have a course with only question banks and all of the teachers have access to the course. Bookmarking the question bank allows the bank to the seen in any other course the teacher belongs to as a teacher. 

[GideonWilliams]

Can I just add to  @kmeeusen ‌ superb response. I have found that I need to bookmark the shared Quiz banks to be able to access those in another location.