Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Lisa LaRew -
Number of replies: 5

Hello,

I am a Moodle 2.8 user and have a question about how best to organize a large (2000 question) question bank that will be used across dozens of courses each semester. Our use case involves individual instructors needing access to the same 2000 question bank but also needing the ability to edit questions from the bank and add their own questions. I have tested organizing the bank at the top category level so that it doesn't need to be copied or imported into each individual course. Then I have given the instructors the Question Sharer role so that they can access those questions. The issues I am finding are:

- I do not want them to edit the "master questions" or categories. They need editing access but ideally it would make a copy of the master question and add to their course category.

- I do not want them to add their own questions to the master top level category bank but they do need to add questions to their course level bank.

Is there anyway to save the question bank at the top category and still achieve this in permission settings for a role? If not, are there other suggestions or do we need to import/restore the full 2000 bank in each course each semester? I have concerns about that approach.

Thank you!

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In reply to Lisa LaRew

Re: Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Rick Jerz -
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I have seen this question being asked before.  Essentially, you want your instructors to have both "public" and "private" access to questions.  You want them to find errors in the master, and then make changes only in their private area.

Well, when I think about this, the answer ends up "no."  I don't know how to give instructors both public and private at the same time.

There are (at least) three options.  

1) Put the 2000 questions into one category that is public to all instructors, and trust them to make edits to questions.  Yes, the risk is with the novice instructor who makes bad edits.  Questions do show who last edited them.  The "master" might need to query the database to see who has done what.

2) Don't allow anyone, except the "master" to edit the 2000 master questions.  Instructors who find mistakes should notify the "master."

3) Make a copy of all initial 2000 questions for every instructor, and let them go to it.  The challenge here is that you have to think carefully about the question categories.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Marcus Green -
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I read the original post, and second Ricks comments.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Lisa LaRew -

Hi Rick,

Thank you for your thorough and helpful response. I wanted to confirm my suspicions that there wasn't an existing process based on roles and permissions that would accommodate this use case. Your three suggestions have given us ideas to discuss though and move forward.

Lisa 

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In reply to Lisa LaRew

Re: Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Rick Jerz -
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Lisa, one thing that you should also explore is the use of "Tags" on every question. It might be that when an instructor adds a question that if they could add their name as a tag, in a consistent manner, that later on, they will be able to search for their own added questions. Of course, this is only as good as your instructor's ability to consistently add their name to each question.
Question "tags" was added to Moodle somewhere along the way, maybe well after Moodle 2.8.
If you are at this week's MountainMoot, I am giving a "lab" on installing a "local" Moodle 3.7 on your PC or Mac. This experimental Moodle provides the ability to experiment with many things, including question banks. Hope to see you.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: Best Practices - Organizing Question Bank

by Eric Bryant -

We organize our courses by discipline, and for those that want to share questions, a specialized role fo "Question Sharer" at the category level.  Minimizing what categories instructors have access to is another way to mitigate possible overwriting of shared questions by new instructors.

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