Moodle: Creating a Collaborative Question Bank

We have a Moodle server for teachers to use to post course content online, Willard E-Learning. Teachers can sign up for a free account and request a course to get started. In the Professional Development section you will find a course that will show you how to design and manage a course, and how to add activities, content, and assessments.

As a result of discussion held last year, it became apparent that it would be beneficial to have a shared quiz question bank that all teachers could access. This would allow one science teacher to use questions already created by another science teacher, or a special ed teacher to create study quizzes using questions created by the math teacher.

Quizzes: When making a Quiz in Moodle, it involves 2 pieces: the Quiz Bank where you enter your questions and the Quiz itself, where you add questions from the Quiz Bank. This activity module is very robust with a large variety of question types, numerous quiz configuration options (number of attempts allowed, feedback, scoring options, changing the order of questions or choices for different users, random or specific questions, etc.), and several Quiz Reports.

Question Sharer Role: First, in order to make this work, a teacher must be assigned the role of Question Sharer at the site level, which is done by a Moodle Administrator. So if you are one of our High School teachers using Moodle and you are not sure if you have been assigned this role, just contact me, Janetta Garton.

Question Categories: By default, questions are created in the question bank in a category that belongs to that course. Only teachers of that course can see/use those questions. When a teacher places the questions in a shared System category, any stored questions will be visible in ALL courses. To maintain a usable question bank, appropriate categories and subcategories need to be created by a Moodle Administrator under the System category. If you need additional categories created please contact me.

Questions: In the System bank, only the author of a question can edit it. However, all teachers can use these questions in a quiz. A teacher can choose to make a copy of another teacher’s question and can then edit it. As you are creating questions you should choose an appropriate category under the System category to make it available to all teachers.

You can also edit an existing question and change it’s category.

To access shared questions while selecting your questions for a quiz, just use the categories menu and scroll down to System, and click the appropriate category.

When we take the time to place questions in the System level categories, we are collaboratively creating a powerful resource that can be used by all our teachers.

In Summary:

1. If you are a teacher creating questions for quizzes, please assign them a category under System so that other teachers can use them.
2. If you can’t access any of the categories under System, contact Janetta Garton to be assigned the role of Questions Sharer.
3. If you need another category added under System, contact Janetta Garton.
4. Check the System categories next time you are creating a quiz, for shared questions that might work for your quiz.

If there happens to be any other Moodle Admins reading this post and you are interested in how I set up the Question Sharer Role and defined the System level question categories, you can read my Creating a Shared Quiz Question Bank notes.