Using the Question Bank

Moodle quiz questions can be organized in the Question Bank. While quizzes can be created without every navigating to the Question Bank, organizing the quiz questions can help speed up the import process, be utilized to create quizzes that use randomized questions, and help keep a record of question changes.

Accessing the Question Bank

The Question Bank can be accessed in any course by:

Clicking on More at the top of the page
Selecting Question Bank

Organizing the Question Bank

The question bank organizes questions into categories. Categories can be created at the bottom of the categories tab. When creating a category, it is advised to have a consistent naming scheme. Having a category naming structure that follows the quiz naming structure would make a lot of sense.

To create a category:

Navigate to the Categories tab within the Question Bank menu
Click Add category
Type in the category name
Select the parent category. Selecting "Top for ..." will create a top level category.
1. Alternatively, creating a subcategory is also an option by selecting an existing category. For example, if Quiz 1 already exists as a category, a subcategory of Quiz 1 could be created by selecting Quiz 1 as the parent category. Creating subcategories is very useful for creating quizzes that choose questions from a category randomly.

It is advised to have a category for each quiz in Moodle to keep the questions organized.

Now that a category exists for every quiz, questions need to be organized into the categories.

Organizing a question bank without any existing questions:

Navigate to the Questions tab within the Question Bank menu
Select the appropriate category
Create a new question by selecting Create a new question
Move on to the next category when ready

Organizing a question bank with existing questions:

If questions exist in a variety of categories that have no intended purpose, delete the existing categories until all questions are under one category. It is best if this category does not have a designated purpose to help clean up wasted quiz questions at the end.
Navigate to the Questions tab within the Question Bank menu that has all existing questions
Open a second tab in the web browser
In the new tab, navigate to the Moodle course
From the main course page, select a quiz
Click on the gear icon in the top right
Select Edit Quiz. This will list the question name for each question in the quiz
By toggling back and forth between the two tabs, select the quiz questions by checking the box on the left side of each question within the Question Bank
Scroll to the bottom of the Question Bank to where it says "With selected:"
Open the drop down menu and choose the appropriate category to move the selected question
Repeat steps until all questions from each quiz has been appropriately moved
The remaining questions can likely be deleted to help speed up the import process

Adding Questions in the Question Bank to a Quiz

Questions in the Question Bank can be added in two methods. The first method is to select all or specific questions from the Question Bank by choosing to add questions "from question bank" when editing the quiz. The second method is to select "a random question" when editing the quiz. The second method will create a randomized question quiz. Creating a randomized question quiz means that every student takes a slightly different quiz than every other student. This can be done on a couple levels of complexity. The basic option is to create a category for a quiz with extra quiz questions than a student will take. For example, the quiz 1 category could have 15 questions, but the actual quiz the student takes only has 10 questions. Moodle randomly delivers 10 of the 15 questions prepared to each student making it statistically likely that every student has a slightly different quiz. The second level is to create several subcategories with extra quiz questions. Subcategory A might have 10 questions but only 5 questions from subcategory A will exist on the quiz. This could ensure that a certain amount of questions exist on each topic while also randomizing the questions.

To add a question in the question bank into a quiz:

Create a category and add questions to the category by following the instructions above.
Navigate to the main course page
Create a new quiz or select an existing quiz
Click on the gear icon in the top right
Select Edit quiz
Select Add on the right side and choose "from question bank"
In the pop-up box, select the appropriate category
To select all questions, click on the box right above the first question.
To select individual questions, click on the box next to the appropriate questions
Click on "Add selected questions to the quiz"

To create a randomized question quiz at the basic level:

Create a category and add questions to the category by following the instructions above. Be sure to have additional questions in the category than the amount of questions the student will answer for the quiz.
Navigate to the main course page
Create a new quiz or select an existing quiz
Click on the gear icon in the top right
Select Edit quiz
Select Add on the right side and choose "a random question"
In the pop-up box, select the appropriate category
Select on how many questions you want to add. This number should be lower than the number of questions in the category.
Click on "Add random question"

For example, if there are 15 questions in the category called "Quiz 1" but students will only answer 10 questions for the quiz called "Quiz 1", choose the correct category and select 10 for "Number of random questions". This will add 10 questions to the quiz and randomly select 10 of the 15 for each student.

To create a randomized question quiz at the second level:

Create subcategories for each topic in the quiz and add questions to the subcategories by following the instructions above. Be sure to have additional questions in each subcategory than the amount of questions the student will answer for each topic.
Navigate to the main course page
Create a new quiz or select an existing quiz
Click on the gear icon in the top right
Select Edit quiz
Select Add on the right side and choose "a random question"
In the pop-up box, select the appropriate subcategory
Select on how many questions you want to add. This number should be lower than the number of questions in the subcategory.
Click on "Add random question"
Repeat for each subcategory

For example, Quiz 1 could cover 3 topics, and there should be 5 random questions for each topic. Create 3 subcategories and more than 5 questions for each subcategory. While adding questions to the quiz, add questions from subtopic A and be sure to select 5 for "Number of random questions". Do the same for subtopic B and C. This will result in a quiz that has 5 random questions from each subtopic of A, B, and C. This ensures there is an appropriate distribution of each topic within the quiz.

Importing/Exporting a Category

Importing and exporting a category can be a useful method to keep a question bank organized and move questions between courses faster. It is important to know that when a quiz is imported from one course to another, Moodle brings along every single question in the question bank and the category structure, regardless of which questions are being used in the quiz. This means that if quiz with 10 questions is being imported into a course but the course being imported from has 100 questions in the question bank, all 100 questions will be moved into the new course. By exporting and importing a specific category, only the specified questions will be brought along.

To export a category:

Create a category and add questions to the category by following the instructions above.
Navigate to the export tab within the Question Bank
Select Moodle XML format
Choose the category to export
Select Export questions to file

To import a category:

Create a category the questions should be added to by following the instructions above.
Navigate to to the import tag within the Question Bank
Select Moodle XML format
Under General, select the import category
Leave Match grades at Error if grade not listed
Leave Yes for Stop on Error
Add the file by drag and dropping or selecting it by using the Choose a file option
Select Import