Overview

Learn about item banks and how to use them in your New Quizzes. Item banks are organised repositories of quiz questions that can be used across multiple quizzes or even multiple courses. Their use is optional, but can help to manage courses with large volumes of quiz questions.

How to set up an item bank

The Item Banks Index

You can create and manage item banks from the Item Banks Index in your course, though, note you can also create item banks with a quiz's 'Build' mode. Select 'Item Banks' from the course navigation menu to access the Item Banks Index (if this menu item doesn't appear, enable it).

Coming from UniSA learnonline?

myLearning item banks are equivalent to UniSA learnonline categories. Item banks are stored in the Item Banks Index like categories are stored in the Question Bank. Both function fairly similarly.

How to set up an item bank

Step-by-step instructions

Open the Item Banks Index.
Select '+ Bank'.

From the 'New item bank' menu, enter a 'Bank name'.
Enable 'Share with...' to share the bank with your course so that other educators can also view the item bank.

Note this will not assign edit permissions to other educators in your course, nor will it assign any permissions to TALAS staff (since TALAS staff do not have teaching access to teaching courses). To assign these permissions, you will need to manually share the item bank after you finish creating it (see the tab on sharing item banks).

Select 'Create Bank'.

You will be returned to the Item Banks Index. You can now start adding questions to your bank.

Select your newly created item bank to start editing it. If you don't see it in the Item Banks Index, try changing the 'Filtered by' drop-down to 'Shared with me' or 'This Course' (depending on which option it's defaulted to).

Inside your item bank, select '+ New' to add a question to it.

Repeat Steps 7-10 to keep add quiz questions to your item bank until you've filled it out.

To exit your item bank, select 'Item Banks' in the top-left to return to the Item Banks Index, or your course name to return to your course homepage. (Note selecting the close button does not work and selecting 'Return' from here may redirect you to the last quiz you edited - these issues have been escalated with Canvas Support for a fix.)

How to add item bank questions to a quiz

How to add item bank questions to a quiz

You can insert individual questions from an item bank into a quiz, or link entire item banks so that all or some questions are drawn randomly drawn into the quiz.

Step-by-step instructions

Open your New Quiz in 'Build' mode (item banks cannot be linked to Classic Quizzes).
Select 'Item Banks'.

In the 'Item Banks' menu, select the item bank you want to draw questions from. If you can't find your item bank, try changing the 'Filtered by' drop-down to 'Shared with me' or 'This Course' (depending on which option it's defaulted to).
Choose how you want to draw your questions from your item bank into your quiz.
1. All: Select '+ All/Random' to link your item bank to your quiz and draw all questions from it.
2. Random: Select '+ All/Random' to link your item bank to your quiz and draw a set number of questions from it at random. For example, you could draw 10 out of 20 questions from your item bank. Each learner would see a random 10 of the 20 questions.
3. Individual: Select the plus button adjacent an individual question to insert a linked copy of it into your quiz.

If you have chosen to add questions from your item bank into your quiz individually, then there are no further steps for you to complete (though, make sure to check the inserted questions are worth the correct number of points and that you have configured the rest of your quiz).

If you have chosen to draw all/random questions from your quiz, you have a few more steps to complete.

Select the edit icon adjacent the linked item bank in your quiz.

Set the 'Question selection' method to 'Use all questions' if you want to draw all questions from your item bank, or 'Randomly select questions' if you want to randomly draw a set portion. If you choose to draw questions randomly, make sure to also set the 'Number of questions' to draw.
Set the 'Points per question'. All questions drawn from the same item bank must be worth the same amount of points.
Select 'Done' to finish.

Your item bank will now be linked to your quiz. Finish configuring your quiz if required, otherwise, you're finished!

How to share an item bank

How to share an item bank

When you create an item bank, you will have the option to share it with your course. Item banks that are shared with your course will be accessible to all teaching staff within the course. Note that TALAS staff do not have teaching permissions in any teaching courses, so will need to have course item banks shared with them directly should they need access.

You will need to manage how your item bank is shared if you missed this step during item bank creation, or if you want to share your item bank with another course and/or individuals without teaching permissions in your course.

Step-by-step instructions

Open the Item Banks Index.
Select the share button adjacent the name of the item bank you want to share.

From the share menu, select the 'People' tab to share your item bank with individual users or the 'Courses' tab to share it with other courses.
In the 'Share With' textbox, enter the name of the user/course you want to share the item bank with.
In the 'Access' drop-down, select the type of access you want to assign the user/course ('View' or 'Edit').
When you're ready to add the new user/course, select 'Add'.

That's all you need to do to share your item bank. You can modify or remove the share permissions assigned to users/courses under the 'Currently shared with'.

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