Duplicating Item Banks

[lph]

A feature many teachers are requesting is the ability to quickly duplicate an item bank. They want to do this because they might have different levels of the material taught in different courses. They want to make a duplicate then make modifications. 

Currently, they have to make a new item bank, then individually copy questions from an item bank into that new item bank. 

The process is rather tedious. I don't see a duplicating feature on the roadmap -- or am I missing something?

[DanielleLentz]

Thanks for reaching out with a great question! Once New Quizzes are able to be exported (coming soon in Q3 per the roadmap), you will be able to export New Quizzes as QTI files and then import them into Item Banks so you can make as many copies as you would like. I hope this information is helpful! Feel free to reach out to your CSM team for additional New Quizzes support. Have a great day! 

[lph]

Thank you for the reply; however, I was thinking more along the line of a checkbox, click on duplicate, and be done with it. Otherwise, I'm being asked to spend 1/2 hour to an hour to duplicate a set of item banks -- versus a click of a button. 

I hope your team considers teachers' time. In my opinion, Canvas needs to improve in this area. 

[DanielleLentz]

Thanks for your feedback! You can provide your suggestion to our Product team at any time via our Ideas and Themes space in the Community. Additionally, I'd encourage you to reach out to your CSM team to discuss course design ideas that can help streamline your Item Bank creation and distribution process. Have a great day! 

[lph]

Hi,

I've taken some time to make sure my reply doesn't come across as someone who dislikes Canvas. I'm a fan. However, Canvas as a product is always about 60% done. Nothing is complete. Therefore, any "feedback" I give is meaningless:

"You can provide your suggestion to our Product team at any time via our Ideas and Themes space in the Community."

Yes. I could -- but -- I'm not the developer. And if you've been around Canvas for at least a few years then you know that development is extremely slow. Ideas sit undone for years. 

But let me not come across as just being goofy or cruel. This is a community and so I'll try to address development.  I mean this with all sincerity. There is no reason for anyone to post suggestions if they are told to go somewhere else and post their suggestions. I'll decline as I have for the past few years.

Instead, consider the lack of development in obvious places (regarding how teachers' time is "wasted"):

• Why can I group assignments but there isn't a collapse all / expand all? This feature exists on Modules.
• Why can't I group pages? 
• Why can't I group quizzes?
• Why do students see all the assignment groups when nothing is published in those assignment groups?
• Why are there so few question types in New Quizzes? Moodle has dozens more. 
• Why can't I embed New Quizzes into a page?
• Why can't I embed an assignment into a page?
• Why can't I embed a set of modules into a page?
• Why are the course landing options limited? 

In terms of obvious for New Quizzes:

• Why can't I select all questions in a quiz (build) and have them all moved at once to an item bank or a new item bank?
• Why can't I easily combine or break apart item banks?
• Why can't I create section dividers in the build portion of a quiz?
• Why isn't there a search for all banks?
• Why can't I group item banks?
• Why is print a quiz limited? Why isn't there an option for two column print? Why can't I change the font size?
• Why aren't tags used during the build process? Why can't I simply build by typing the tag and having all those questions appear?
• Why can't I simply type the standard and have all those questions appear during the build process?
• Why do I have to go into the build process to "moderate" a quiz? Make the option in the pull down from the module / quiz page.
• Why do I have to go into the build process for quiz analysis reports? Again -- pull down menu from module and quiz page.

When the obvious is done, then we can talk about cleaning up development in each of the areas. When the obvious is done, then I'd be more than happy to post suggestions on how to improve the product. Until then, I politely decline. I'm not paid to be a consultant. I'm a customer with growing concern that teachers will simply reject Canvas and happily move to Google Classroom because they think it is easier. If I was a consultant, then I'd bluntly state development needs to become a priority; stop dinking around the edges and fix the obvious.

[DanielleLentz]

Thank you for providing this information! These are great things to bring up to your CSM so they can work with you on these items and collaborate with you on possible solutions and/or workarounds. 

[vanzandt]

I think it's important to understand that not all (1,928,491) community members have direct access to their CSM. So, this community serves as a place for the actual users of the system to share their suggestions directly with you all as a product team, or as a part of Instructure. When items of obvious (basic/easy/fundamental) improvement are shared, the Instructure community team should be able to get them directly to the product managers to be included for consideration, and not go through some convoluted routing process just to get back to the ultimate endpoint. 

[lsalgueiroa23 · Accepted solution]

Hi there, @lph 

There is an update related to this topic: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/The-Product-Blog/New-Quizzes-Duplicate-Item-Banks/ba-p/588567

Cheers, 

Lucía