Hello folks
We are thinking of moving our many 1000's of questions to the system-wide level.
Does anyone have any advice regarding this?
Kind regards
Stephen
In my opinion, as a user and not as an IT analyst, there shouldn't be a problem. However, make sure that the instructors or those responsible for the quizzes understand the structure of the question bank, which is simple once you are familiar with it.
Thank you, Dominique.
Stephen, when you have questions as the "quiz level" context, it's best in my opinion. This is because when you duplicate your quiz or import it into another course, each set of questions is unique to the quiz it's located in.
Now if you simply move all existing questions to thr site level context, you should not be affected by the following warning (which applies to adding new quiz questions from the site level or course level contexts;
creating in or adding questions from a higher context (site/course) has the benefit that when you edit 1 question in quiz A, it updates in quiz B (provided you added the question into quiz B from that higher context). But staff may not be aware that when they edit a question it could be also updating in all other locations. Also when you import activities from once course to another that course context bank will come with them (which shouldn't affect you if you are putting them at the site level context).
I realized this when I made a generic quiz in a math class, imported it into an art class, then noticed in the Art course's course context quiz bank contained every question from
That math course. Once I moved all questions down to the quiz- context I never had that issue of unintentionally importing course level context question banks into other courses.
Now if you simply move all existing questions to thr site level context, you should not be affected by the following warning (which applies to adding new quiz questions from the site level or course level contexts;
creating in or adding questions from a higher context (site/course) has the benefit that when you edit 1 question in quiz A, it updates in quiz B (provided you added the question into quiz B from that higher context). But staff may not be aware that when they edit a question it could be also updating in all other locations. Also when you import activities from once course to another that course context bank will come with them (which shouldn't affect you if you are putting them at the site level context).
I realized this when I made a generic quiz in a math class, imported it into an art class, then noticed in the Art course's course context quiz bank contained every question from
That math course. Once I moved all questions down to the quiz- context I never had that issue of unintentionally importing course level context question banks into other courses.
Stephen,
As it stands, there are pros and cons of putting questions at one level or another. I probably should have asked you why you want to move all of your questions to the system level.
As you may know, it has been proposed to fix the question bank in Moodle 4.0. Perhaps your question would have had more feedback in this thread ↗.
Thank you John. I work in the motorcar repair sector and there are 4 main topic areas. Questions can be used in all areas and so a question has the potential of being used many times. This is why we want to move the existing question banks to the System level. I then have the joyful task of identifying their difficauly level, allocate topics and add Tags.... Wish me luck
Stephen,
I agree with what you want to do and the reasons why you would have your questions in one place so you can use them throughout your 4 areas. I too work in technical training on the corporate side where you need a central database of questions. However, what John said is true about copying courses. In my system I have all my questions like you want to arrange yours and because Moodle makes a copy of the entire question bank, my system is basically broken when it comes to importing an existing course to a new one or doing a backup / restore to a new course. If we want to make a change in the course, we have to build the course brand new every time we run that course.
If you build your question bank that way, I would use the backup / restore method to duplicate a course and try to save the backed up course so you only have to restore it to a duplicate course.
You might evaluate building your question bank at least one layer down to the category level. Maybe build your 4 main topics as categories and if you find that only a handful of questions overlap then copy only those questions and keep them in a sub category within that sector where you can identify them easy and maintain them in the event of changes. My system is all built at the "Top" level and the ability to duplicate a course it's fundamentally broke due to the clutter that duplicating a course brings with it.
Hope this helps,
Mark
I agree with what you want to do and the reasons why you would have your questions in one place so you can use them throughout your 4 areas. I too work in technical training on the corporate side where you need a central database of questions. However, what John said is true about copying courses. In my system I have all my questions like you want to arrange yours and because Moodle makes a copy of the entire question bank, my system is basically broken when it comes to importing an existing course to a new one or doing a backup / restore to a new course. If we want to make a change in the course, we have to build the course brand new every time we run that course.
If you build your question bank that way, I would use the backup / restore method to duplicate a course and try to save the backed up course so you only have to restore it to a duplicate course.
You might evaluate building your question bank at least one layer down to the category level. Maybe build your 4 main topics as categories and if you find that only a handful of questions overlap then copy only those questions and keep them in a sub category within that sector where you can identify them easy and maintain them in the event of changes. My system is all built at the "Top" level and the ability to duplicate a course it's fundamentally broke due to the clutter that duplicating a course brings with it.
Hope this helps,
Mark
Hello Mark. Please forgive me for the very late reply..... Management has gotten involved and made it a lot worse. (Why do they do that?)
We use course templates with 'empty quizzes' because of issues regarding duplicating questions..... Ended up with very messy questions banks by duplicating courses. Below is how we are intending to organise the questions.
We use course templates with 'empty quizzes' because of issues regarding duplicating questions..... Ended up with very messy questions banks by duplicating courses. Below is how we are intending to organise the questions.
Thanks for your input... Much appreciated