Manage Your Question Bank Questions

• When a course is created in Moodle, it only has one question bank category by default. This category is named "Default for [course name]."
• You can rename this parent category by going to your question bank, clicking "Questions," and selecting "Categories."
• Click the gear icon underneath the text "The default category for questions shared in context 'yourcategoryname.'

• Enter a new name in the "Name" field, and click "Save changes."

A good practice for organizing large question banks is to create additional question bank categories before adding any questions. Name your categories in a manner that is intuitive for you and helps you locate content, especially if you plan to reuse your questions in future courses. Categories can also be divided into sub-categories for additional organization. For example, a General Science course may have four topic categories, with questions organized by textbook chapter:

• General Science Question Bank
  • Earth History
    • Chapter 1 Questions
    • Chapter 2 Questions
  • Cycling of Matter
    • Chapter 3 Questions
    • Chapter 4 Questions
  • Relationships in Ecosystems
    • Chapter 5 Questions
    • Chapter 6 Questions
  • Alternative Energy Sources
    • Chapter 7 Questions

As the course is reused from semester to semester, it will be easy to locate specific questions on a topic or chapter by adding questions related to a specific category or subcategory.

Questions can be added to the question bank directly or by adding questions to a quiz. When creating a question via the question bank, ensure you've selected the appropriate category before clicking "Create a New Question." 

When creating a question via a quiz, select the proper category in the question editor to ensure the question is stored in the right place.

While it is important to name questions for organizational purposes, there is no "right" way to name questions. However, before adding any questions to your question bank, have a plan for naming your questions for consistency across your course. Consider naming conventions appropriate for your topic that will help you locate questions for future quizzes. Adding tags to questions can help with this, as well. 

Look at an example from our General Science course on one way to name questions. As questions are added to a category, three pieces of information are added to the name:

• Topic
• Question number (within that topic)
• Sub-topic

As a result, a question added to the category "Alternative Energy Sources" might have the name "Alternative Energy, Q1 (Wind)." Subsequent questions can be named in the same manner, allowing easy identification of the topic, subtopic, and number of questions in the category. 

Adding question tags allows you to filter your question bank and locate questions based on your assigned criteria. Common tags include question type (ex., multiple-choice, essay), content reference (ex., Chapter 7, novel name), or topic (ex., renewable resources, World War II). Questions can have multiple tags. For example, one of our alternative energy questions might have the following tags: renewable resources, multiple-choice, Chapter 7:

To add a tag to a question, open your question bank and the category where your questions are located. Next to the question you'd like to tag, select "Edit" and "Manage tags."

You can add question tags by typing them directly into the search bar and hitting "return." Additionally, you can select a previously entered tag by selecting it in the search bar.

Once your questions have been tagged, you can filter them by one or more tags. For example, you could apply a filter for all multiple-choice questions from Chapter 7.