The Question Bank
When you have quizzes, you have questions. Lots of questions. And you probably have several questions that you reuse for multiple quizzes. So why would you want to waste time rewriting a question each time you want to include it on a quiz?
Quia is all about helping you save time and using common-sense design to make your job easier. Therefore, we encourage you to use Quia's Question Bank to manage all your quiz questions.
With the Question Bank, you can view and categorize every quiz question you've ever created, in one convenient place. Whether you create your questions on the Question Bank page or in the Quiz Editor, you can find them all in the Question Bank.
What can I do with the Question Bank?
The Question Bank lets you do all of the following:
- Create new quiz questions.
- Import questions from other Quia activities and from text files.
- Search for questions based on various criteria.
- View and modify any question you created in the past.
- Categorize your questions by assigning labels to them.
What are labels and how do I use them?
A label is a tag that can be associated with a quiz question. You use labels to categorize questions based on skill level, topic, or any other category you deem useful. A question can have as many labels as you wish.
One of the most useful aspects of labels is the ability to design quizzes that randomly display questions associated with a specific label. For example, you could create a 50-question exam that includes five random questions from each of a textbook's ten chapters, or an exam that includes 10 questions covering the topics "South America" and "history" and another 10 questions covering the topics "South America" and "geography."
Example
Create questions
Your Question Bank may include the following questions, all of which are related to chapter 9 (South America) and chapter 10 (Asia) of your textbook:
• What are Brazil's two largest cities?
• Which leader brought independence to Brazil?
• What is the capital of Malaysia?
Create labels
You may wish to categorize these questions with the following labels: chapter 9, chapter 10, Asia, South America, geography, history.
Assign labels to questions
Assign the labels to the questions, as follows:
• What are Brazil's two largest cities?
Labels: chapter 9, South America, geography
• Which leader brought independence to Brazil?
Labels: chapter 9, South America, history
• What is the capital of Malaysia?
Labels: chapter 10, Asia, geography
Design quizzes
Create a quiz that displays five questions that have the label chapter 9, to test your students' understanding of that chapter. Of the questions in this example, Quia may display the two questions about Brazil but never the one about Malaysia.
The Question Bank is loaded with features!
Create questions that you can reuse over and over
To create a question, click Create new questions. Enter the information in the Question Editor as prompted.
Import questions from another Quia activity or from a text file
To import questions, click Import questions and enter information on the Import page as prompted.
Search for existing questions by keyword, type, or date
Enter search terms in the Search by section to retrieve a list of questions that match those terms. You can search for questions by keyword (for example, all questions containing the word orbit), by question type (such as multiple choice or essay), or by the date they were created or last modified (for example, all questions created or changed between September 1, 2006 and September 30, 2006).
Once you have entered your search terms, click Search. Quia will display a list of questions that match your criteria.
Note: You can also search based on label or quiz. For more information on these types of searches, see Labels and Quizzes sections below.
View and manage all your labels in one place
The Labels box displays a complete list of all your labels. The number in parentheses indicates how many questions are using that label.
Click on any label to see a list of the exact questions associated with it.
Click Create/Edit labels to create, change, or delete a label.
View a list of all questions included in a quiz
The Quizzes box displays a complete list of all of your quizzes. Click on any quiz name to see a list of all of the questions it includes.
Manage your questions and their label assignments
Once you have retrieved a list of questions - either by searching, clicking a label, or clicking a quiz - you can sort the results alphabetically, by creation date, or by the date they were last modified.
You can also use the Actions drop-down list to edit questions in your list, delete them, or add or change their labels. Just select the check box associated with each question you want to modify, then select the appropriate option from the Actions list. For example, if you want to apply a particular label to five of the questions, select the check boxes for each of these five questions and then select the appropriate label from the Actions list.