What is the Quiz bank file format?

[SeanKim]

Suppose I have  many sets of questions and answer choices for multiple choice questions or matching questions that are all in text format. For instance 

q1. what is blah?

a. blah is meh, b. blah is blah, c. blah is wut. d. blah is kek. 

q2. match the following :

1. blah, 2 meh, 3. wut, 4. kek 

a. mehmeh, b. blahblah. c. kekek. d. wutwut

Is there a way to import these text questions in a text file or a word file into the quiz bank in one step? Or even in a few steps? Is there a phrase or a term for referring to such an action? 

It appears canvas uses QTI format which is xml based? Is there a way or a software tool to use this language to easily modify the text into a quiz bank to be imported? What might such a tool be? 

Any help is much appreciated. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @SeanKim ...

I wrote a blog post back in 2015 called Batch Uploading Quiz Questions with Respondus which explains how you can create a properly formatted text file, Word document, etc. to upload many quiz questions all at one time.  This works well for current Classic Quizzes, but I believe the folks at Respondus are working on something for New Quizzes...though I don't know their timeline on that.

Hope this might help!  Sing out if you have any questions.

[SeanKim]

Ok Thank you. That format helps a lot. I wonder what the actual file format is. Once you have all the questions formatted, what type headers or footers or other things do you need in order to import that into the canvas as a quiz bank? 

[Chris_Hofer]

@SeanKim ...

I'm not really sure of an answer for you on this question.  I always used either *.txt or *.rtf files (as *.rtf files allowed me to do some very simple formatting such as bold, italics, sub- and superscript, etc.).  None of these files used headers or footers like you are asking about.  It was simply the questions and answer key as I have outlined in the blog I wrote.

[SeanKim]

It turns out to be a complicated xml file format.

Just in case you're wondering there seems to be free online converter like the one on http://ec2-34-207-154-191.compute-1.amazonaws.com/

I had another question about assigning fractional points to questions. Not sure if I should start another thread about it. I'd like to assign 0.2 point per definition type of questions. So answering 10 definitions will get them 5 points. Is that possible? 

[Chris_Hofer]

@SeanKim ...

Yes, you should be able to add decimal point values to questions.  So, your example of 0.2 points per question (10 questions) for a total of 5 points should be possible.  You might try creating an unpublished quiz with a few questions in it to try out the point values.  I want to say it accepts up to 2 decimal places, but I'm not 100% sure.  Something else you could certainly try out if you wanted.

[SeanKim]

ok. thank you