Canvas Question Banks (Classic Quizzes)

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Canvas Question Banks

Question Banks are a place to house questions that can be added to quizzes, used to create randomized questions groups and shared across courses. Instead of creating questions from scratch, instructors can quickly re-use or modify existing questions from their banks.

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Accessing Question Banks

  • In Course Navigation, click the Quizzes link.
  • Click the Settings icon [1] and click the Manage Question Banks link [2].

Note: Instructors can also access course question banks by adding question_banks to the end of their course URL.

For example — hxxps://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/4031/question_banks. Students cannot access these.

Managing Question Banks

  1. How to create a question bank
  • Open Question Banks (see Step 1 above).
  • Click the Add Question Bank button.
  • Name the question bank and press Return (on a MAC keyboard ) or Enter (on a PC keyboard).
  • Open the question bank by clicking the title of the question bank.

2. How to create a question in a question bank

  • Click the Add Question Bank button.
  • Click the Update Question button to save any changes.

3. How to move/copy a question from one question bank to another

  • Open Quizzes. Click the Settings icon (the three vertical dots) and click the Manage Question Banks link. To manage a Question Bank, click its title.
  • Click the move/copy question to another bank link to move/copy the question to another question bank.

• To copy/move a question to a certain bank, click its title [1]. To only copy the question, click the Keep a copy in this question bank as well checkbox [2]. Then click the Move/Copy Questions button [3] to copy the question.

Moving questions removes the question from the original question bank. Copying questions leaves a copy in the original question bank and adds a copy to the selected question bank.

Instructors can also move multiple questions from one question bank to another. Copying questions is not available for multiple questions.

Instructors can only copy or move questions between question banks in the same course.

Using Question Banks in a Quiz

Instructors will need to first create a quiz first in Canvas. When instructors use the Find Questions in a Question Bank option, they will see all of the Question Banks that they have built in other courses where they are the instructor.

When instructors use the Find Questions in a Question Bank option to build a quiz, changes made to questions in the question bank will not update in the quiz (likewise, changes made to questions in a quiz will not be reflected in the question bank). Changes will update in the quiz only if the questions are linked to a question bank.

  1. How to pull questions from the question bank into a quiz
  • Open Quizzes. Click the Add Quiz button.
  • Click the Questions tab [1]. Click the Find Questions button [2].

2. How to create a group of randomized questions from a question bank

When instructors create a quiz using a Question Group linked to a Question Bank, Canvas will reference the chosen bank of questions as each student takes the quiz. Each student will get a specified number of questions, pulled from the bank at random. The number of questions and point value per question is specified when the question group is created. (All questions in a question group MUST be worth the same amount of points.)

Question Bank: the original bank of questions created

Question Group: the group of questions within a quiz that have pulled from the Question Bank.

Note: When linking a question bank to a quiz, be sure to make changes within the question bank before the quiz is available to take. Although it’s possible to make changes to the question bank after a quiz is published, students who have already opened or completed the quiz will not see any of the changes. Students who begin their quiz after the changes are made will see updates. Questions that are linked to a Question Bank cannot be regraded since they may be used in more than one quiz.

  • Open Quizzes. Click the Add Quiz button.
  • Click the Questions tab [1]. Click the New Question Group button [2].
  • Create Group Details: Give the question group a name [1] (custom names can be helpful in identifying quiz question groups more easily). Instructors should decide how many questions they want Canvas to randomly select from the group [2] and the number of points assigned to each question [3].
  • Click the Link to a Question Bank link [4].

• Select the question bank to reference in the quiz [1]. Click the Select Bank button [2].

• Confirm the correct Question Bank is linked to the question group [1]. Click the Create Group button [2].

• To change the number of questions to be picked from the group or to change the points assigned, click the Edit icon. To delete the question group, click the Delete icon.

Using Question Banks Across Canvas Courses

1. How to bookmark a question bank in a course

The Question Bank Bookmark feature gives instructors a way of keeping track of frequently accessed Question Banks. When instructors bookmark a Question Bank, it can be accessed in any other course they teach.

 Note: Any Question Banks created will be bookmarked by default.

  • Open Quizzes. Click the Settings icon (three vertical dots) and click the Manage Question Banks link.
  • Click the Bookmark icon [1]. The bookmark will show a white x to verify the bank is bookmarked [2].
  • On the Manage Question Bank page, instructors will see all the question banks for the course.
  • In the sidebar, instructors can click the View Bookmarked Banks button to view all the banks bookmarked across their courses.
  • (To remove the bookmark from a bank, click the Bookmark icon again.)

Instructors can also import a question bank from one Canvas course to another.

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