The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Greg Waddell -
Number of replies: 10

I just spent many hours putting adding questions to the Question Bank with the idea of then incorporating them into a Lesson. Now I can't find a way to do it. Am I right in conclusing that the Lessons module stores these in its own database and that I have go through and now recreate all of these questions if I want them to be included in the lesson? 

P.S. I know this questions has been asked before, but I'm really having difficulty finding stuff in this forum. The search results for some reason don't seem to narrow down well for what I'm looking for. So, please excuse me if this questions has already been answered.

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In reply to Greg Waddell

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Tim Hunt -
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You are correct.

People have been saying since the time of Moodle 1.6 that the lesson should be converted to use questions from the question bank, but that still has not been done.

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In reply to Greg Waddell

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Ro Eng -

I am sure someone may have a better answer...but...  here goes

If you already put the questions in the question bank and can not access them from the lesson..you can export them from the question bank in gift/xml whatever format and then re-import them into the lesson import question area.  I think Gift and xml might be options in both resources.

This answer is based on 1,9

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In reply to Ro Eng

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Greg Waddell -

Cool!  You just saved me a ton of extra work.  Worked like a charm.

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In reply to Greg Waddell

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Ro Eng -

Gotta love it when things work out a little bit.  I would love to see if anyone has any other ideas.

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In reply to Ro Eng

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Rhonda,

Thanks for helping out the original poster in this matter. You are right, this is the (only) way to get questions from the Moodle questions bank into a Lesson activity.

Everything is explained in the documentation here.

For exporting/importing I would recommend using the Moodle XML format.

Greg "I just spent many hours putting adding questions to the Question Bank with the idea of then incorporating them into a Lesson."

As you found out, that was not a good idea. If all you want in the end is to have questions in a Lesson activity, why did you not create those questions directly in your Lesson, rather than going to the Quiz Questions bank?

@Tim, why don't we simply abandon the fiction that the Moodle questions bank can serve other activities than Quiz, and simply rename it the Quiz Questions bank, to save frustration? This situation has been going on for many years, and leads to problems such as the one reported by the OP.wink

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Tim Hunt -
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Would you like to be able to have drag-and-drop questions in your lessons? What about STACK questions? Well, I know you are more into languages so how about pmatch or regex questions?

Any why should we only be able to have these questions in quizzes, and one day decade lessons? What about activities like http://tjhunt.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/what-i-want-to-build-next.html. I also know of someone who has built an 'offline quiz' activity, using the question bank, but they have not shared it yet.

Are those enough good reasons yet?

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In reply to Tim Hunt

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Joseph Rézeau -
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Hi Tim, and thanks for taking up my provocative message.wink Of course I agree that it would be nice if the questions which are "sitting" there in the Questions bank could be used in more activities than Quiz... one day.

However, the current discussion is all about the Lesson activity, and at the moment I see no way for including questions from the Questions bank into a Lesson the way that this possible with the Quiz activity. This would need a huge refactoring of the Lesson plugin, and I do not see it happening any time soon.

ATB

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Tim Hunt -
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Yes, it would be a big refactor of the lesson code. (Or alternatively, someone building a new module like the lesson, but starting from scratch using the question bank.)

In either case http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Using_the_question_engine_from_module is the docs page to read.

My problem is that I have never used the lesson module, so I don't know the full range of functionality that needs to be upgraded or re-implemented, so I cannot really comment on how much work it would be.

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: The Question Bank and Lessons -- No Connection?

by Melanie Scott -

Questions in the question bank can also be used in the Games module.

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