Well folks, here's the update I got from Instructure on my ticket related to this topic, my emphasis.
Assessments and individual assessment questions exist within the context of the course, which allows them to able aligned to course Outcomes. However Item Banks exist within the context of the user who creates the Bank, allowing a user to manage and use questions across multiple courses. Because of this, an Item Bank question is not always guaranteed to have access to the same course Outcome, therefor only account Outcomes may be used.
I understand what is being said, here, but that doesn't make the tool any better, really. If I smartly create item banks of questions that are designed to evaluate only one course outcome, each, I will be unable to implement those banks within a Q.N assessment that includes multiple banks and take advantage of Course Outcomes and the Mastery Gradebook. Even if I only use one item bank per assessment, I can't take advantage of them, either, while still enjoying random selection and presentation of questions.
What I glean from this is that I should:
- establish an account for each course, discrete enough from other hierarchies so that my Account Outcomes make sense for all courses in the account [my problem happened on the non-credit side of things where everything is lumped together]
- establish account outcomes
- wait for overnight/eventual outcome synchronization into Q.N
- tie account outcomes to each question in an item bank
Something else I was hoping, was to align outcomes (evidently only Institution/Account-level) to an item bank. That would streamline things.
The lingering question... If I am an account=1 user and teach courses across sub-accounts (where outcomes might live), wouldn't my item bank questions be in the same situation (as if course outcomes were used) if applied to an assessment in a course where the relevant account outcomes do not live? -- that is, not always guaranteed to have access to the aligned outcomes...
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