Copy questions within same question bank

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

Right now you can copy questions from one question bank from to another question bank but you cannot copy a question within the same question bank.  Often you want to copy a question to the same bank so that you can edit it to make slight variations of the same question. Right now, to do this, I have to make a fake 2nd bank, copy the question over to the second bank and then copy it back to the original bank.  This is beyond silly and it should be a trivial thing to fix by the programmers.

22 Comments
don_bryn
Community Champion

I also always keep a bank called "*moving bank" (notice the asterisk to keep it pinned to the top of the list).   Question banks for me often have similar questions so that students can take the quiz again and see different questions.   So I create one question and copy it to the moving bank and then copy it back as many times as I need copies.  But I just realized I could edit it in the moving bank and copy it, then edit it for the next question and copy it again, etc.   

Still, being able to copy within the bank would save steps.   The above method really is a work-around for something we need inside one bank.

cxy11
Community Novice
Author

I do the same thing.  I create a temporary question bank and edit questions in the temporary bank and copy it over to the question bank that I want.   However, this is extra two steps that are really should not be needed.

alice_johnstone
Community Explorer

This would also help if the feedback from each question was copied as well. There are usually similar responses required for similar problems and anything that makes these faster to create would be appreciated.

kutchel
Community Member

I teach pharmacology.  Often, I want to keep the answers the same - maybe a list of adverse effects - and just change the drug I'm asking about.  A one-step copy would be VERY helpful.

cxy11
Community Novice
Author

I believe there will be improved question copying capabilities in the new Canvas quiz that they are suppose to roll out in December although I do not know exactly what these capabilities are.

dnolan2
Community Novice

I am totally frustrated by Canvas' failure to implement this rather simple change when they did the massive set of changes to the quizzing feature last year.  I can only guess that the designers have never run tests on college level students.  This sort of copy the question, to change the question but keep the answer set the same is quite common in college level courses.

jhveem
Community Explorer

First, I support this being a feature. However, in the meantime, if anyone is familiar with tampermonkey or other javascript userscript managers, here is a short script I wrote that will add  duplicate button to quiz bank items next to the edit button.

(async function () {
  let regex = /\/courses\/([0-9]+)\/question_banks\/([0-9]+)/;
  let matches = window.location.pathname.match(regex);
  let courseId = matches[1];
  let bankId = matches[2];
  $("#questions .question_holder").each(function () {
    let question = $(this).find(".question");
    let questionId = (question.attr("id")).replace("question_", "");
    let dupButton = $('<a href="#" class="no-hover" title="Duplicate this Question"><i class="icon-plus standalone-icon"><span class="screenreader-only">Duplicate this Question</span></i></a>');
    dupButton.click(function () {
      duplicateQuestion(questionId);
    });
    question.find(".links").prepend(dupButton);
  });

  async function duplicateQuestion(questionId) {
    let url = window.location.origin + "/courses/" + courseId + "/question_banks/" + bankId + "/move_questions";
    let questions = {};
    questions[questionId] = 1;
    await $.post(url, {
      multiple_questions: 0,
      assessment_question_bank_id: bankId,
      copy: 1,
      move: 0,
      questions: questions
    });
    location.reload();
  }
})();
greenmar
Community Member

This would be a great addition

CraigOgden
Community Participant

I am pretty sure this has been implemented.  I copy questions into the same back all the time.  In fact I do it multiple times a day.Banks.png

KristinL
Community Team
Community Team
Status changed to: Completed
Comments from Instructure

 

Sorry for the delay in the update to this thread! This was made available within New Quizzes over 12 months ago. If you have any questions, please visit the New Quizzes Hub.