Sharing item banks

[jbielecki]

I don't completely understand where item banks for New Quizzes are stored, so I'm wondering something. If I have my own, personal "sandbox" course and copy the course, the item banks attached to the quizzes in that course don't automatically copy or share, do they? They just draw from the original banks in my account, right? My main question then is whether or not I should share my item banks with my new course. Here are my thoughts:

1. I know that even if I don't share the banks with the new course, I can access the banks from the new course by choosing "All Banks" in the dropdown menu since they're my banks, right? So is sharing pointless unless I may ever want to share with another user? (point against sharing)
2. If I do share the banks, will that cause unnecessary clutter and duplication in my account? I'm thinking no. (neutral re: sharing)
3. On the other hand, will sharing the banks mean I have a backup if something happens to the original course? (if yes, point in favor of sharing) 
4. I can probably export the banks to a hard drive, right? If so, sharing is probably pointless for my purposes. (point against sharing)
5. However, I think that, either way, if the original course gets deleted or corrupted, I'll lose all the banks, right? Again, this seems like sharing is pointless for my purposes. (point against sharing)

So, within my own personal courses that I don't foresee ever sharing with anyone, to share or not to share? Any advice, recommendations, and explanations are appreciated!

P.S. As I was working yesterday on a copied old quiz converted to a New Quiz that draws from multiple banks, I shared some of the banks to the copied course but then thought maybe I shouldn't. Should I go back and (A) share all the banks used or (B) unshare the ones I shared? Unsharing won't affect the quiz since all the banks are in my account, right?

[ColtonSwapp]

Hello @jbielecki 

These are all great questions! 

As far as I understand it, Item banks are tied to your instructor Canvas account instead of being hosted/stored in individual courses like classic quizzes and question banks were designed. One of benefits to this is that you will have access to use your item banks by choosing "All Banks" where ever you have have permission to create and edit a quiz using New Quizzes. This means that you "technically" no longer need to back up a hard copy/QTI file of the banks for use later. However, you are more than welcome to continue doing this if you want! I know that some instructors will do this if they are teaching at two different institutions and need to change little things in the questions when shared into their new quizzes. 

As far as sharing the bank, you'd typically only use this if you want to allow another Instructor or Canvas Admin to use the bank in their Canvas course or sub account. With that, you can control different permissions such as, if they can edit the bank in their course after it is shared.  

Since Item banks are tied to your account instead of to specific courses, if a course gets corrupted/deleted or content is overwritten, the item banks still remain in your account and you can easily re-link them back to your new quizzes again. There is no harm in sharing banks to your copied courses. It just means that you can select the "This Course" option when trying to view which banks you can have your new quiz pull from. 

I would love to hear from other instructors and their personal experience on this. 

Hopefully this helps! 

-Colton 

[HannahHouse]

Hello @ColtonSwapp,

We have been hesitant to roll out New Quizzes at our institution because we rely solely on Blueprints in Canvas. Each course has one blueprint that we push to live sections every term. Previously, we found that Blueprints do not automatically share item banks with live course sections or instructors when the content is pushed. This requires manual sharing of item banks each term, which is not sustainable given our terms starting every 5 weeks and multiple course sections per course.

Has this issue been resolved with the forced migration to New Quizzes? Instructors need access to the item banks for the exams and quizzes, and manually sharing item banks with 20 live sections every term is not sustainable.

Thank you for your insight!

[MatthewClifft]

Hi Hannah, 

At the moment, there is no planned force migration to new quizzes. As per your question, I tested importing a new quiz with banked questions into a blueprint parent, and then syncing the changes over. it did appear to properly create and share the item bank and quiz properly to the child course. 

I would recommend reaching out to Canvas support if when you test this on your side, you encounter a different result, or if something appears to be working not as expected or intended. 

[jbielecki]

@ColtonSwapp, thanks for your reply. Because you state that "you will have access to use your item banks by choosing "All Banks" where ever you have have permission to create and edit a quiz using New Quizzes," I'd like to ask you about a related problem that I just posted:

"I converted my Canvas question banks to New Quizzes item banks. One of them I just accidentally "unshared" with myself by changing it from "edit" to "view" in all my courses. I guess because one of the courses was the one in which the bank had been created, I can't find a way to reshare it or edit it at all now. Please see the attachment. You'll notice that the "edit" and "delete" icons have disappeared and all the options in the "share" pop-up box are grayed out. How can I get edit access back?

P.S. On a related note, I think the reason I made this error was because I don't understand where the item banks are stored. If they are stored in a course, won't they be [inaccessible] when the course expires? Because of this, I thought they must be stored in my Canvas account somewhere, so I didn't have to give any courses edit access. Since the bank can still be viewed, it must still exist, but where? If I'm logged into my account, I figured I'd be able to access the bank I created."

By the way, I don't get "All Banks" as an option. I feel like I may have gotten it once back in May or June, but I just tried to create a New Quiz and didn't get it. 

[willmoin]

As far as I know you can't download to backup Item Banks, you have to put all of the questions into a quiz first and then download that

[ProfessorBeyrer]

Thank you @jbielecki for this post and @ColtonSwapp for your response. I have been doing some fall course prep and created a lot of item banks. I got into the habit of selecting the box to share the item banks with the current course. I found it a lot easier to reference those item banks later on by choosing the "This Course" list. Else I would have to scroll through all the other item banks that I use in other courses, and naming conventions are not as consistent as they could be. 🤦‍