This article explains what the Question Library is and how you use it.
The content of this article contains:
What is the Question Library?
Each course has its own Question Library: a central storage space to save, sort and archive questions. This enables you to easily access and re-use them in quizzes and surveys.
- Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click Quizzes.
- Click Question Library (second tab).
- Create all questions in the Question Library so that you can easily add them to different quizzes/surveys (at the same time) if you want to.
- If you have already created questions in Quizzes or Surveys, we recommend to import them into the Question Library to create a clear overview as everything will be saved in one spot.
- Create multiple Sections (folders) within the question library to be able to order and easily find and re-use questions.
After having created your Question Library, you have access to the following options:
- The folder structure of your Question Library is displayed on the left side of the screen. The folders you see are the sections you have created.
- Click New to create a new section/question. Click Import to add questions you have created in an activity at some point or that were saved on your desktop.
- Use the tabs to perform the following actions with the selected questions/sections:
- Move a question/questions to a different section or move a section/sections to a different section (Move).
- Delete the selected questions/sections (Delete).
- Change the order of your questions/sections in your Question Library (Order).
- Easily change the max. amount of the points a student can achieve, the level of difficulty and/or whether the question is obligatory or not (Edit Values).
- Publish a question that contains copyright materials to the LOR (Publish to LOR).
- The icons preceding the title indicate a section (folder icon) or a question (question mark icon).
- Click the fold-out arrow behind a question to open the quick-menu:
- Click Edit to edit the question.
- Click Preview to view the question as a student, as an assessor, see if there is feedback and/or a hint attached to it and where the question is situated.
- Click Attempts to see how many times the question has been filled out and with which results.
Create sections
With the help of Sections you can organise your questions in folders. The use of sections has a number of advantages:
- You can create an orderly Question Library by moving multiple questions to separate folders (sections).
- You can import a complete section directly into a quiz or survey. (Note: all features attached to the sections will be imported as well: the section title, question(s) and added information and/or images and/or feedback.)
- You can create sub-sections within a section. (for example: the section Quizzes can consist of two sub-sections: Semester 1 and Semester 2)
- You can use sections as an introductory text/extra information. This can be information that does not have any questions attached to it, or a case you want to use that does already contain multiple questions, for example:
- If you made a quiz that has two parts and you would like to inform the students about that at the start of the quiz (part 1 will test your knowledge of the subject and consists of 10 multiple choice questions, part 2 will test insight and consists of 5 open questions);
- f you want to provide additional information that only applies to a specific part of the quiz and therefore should only be shown as soon as the students have arrived at that point of the quiz (this second part consists of 5 open questions, make sure to include elements x,y,z in your answers and that they are no longer than x words).
Create one or more sections in your Question Library before adding your questions. This way you can order your questions in folders immediately.
- Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click Quizzes.
- Click Question Library (second tab).
- Click New.
- Click Section.
- Name the section.
- Under Section Text add a description/note if desired.
- Check Hide Section Text from learners if you want to add a description that is only visible to you.
- Tick Shuffle questions in this section if you want the questions in the sections to be randomised (shuffled).
- Click Save to save the section. You will return to the Question Library.
Import existing questions
You can import existing question in the Question Library. This applies to questions:
- you have created yourself in Quizzes of Surveys;
- saved on your computer (only csv- or zip files).
Import questions from Quizzes
- Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click Quizzes.
- Click Question Library (second tab).
- Click Import.
- Click Browse Existing Questions.
- Below Source Collection select from which Quiz/Survey you would like to import questions to your library.
- Tick the desired questions.
- Click Add.
Import questions from your desktop
- Navigate to Course Tools in the navbar of your course.
- Click Quizzes.
- Click Question Library (second tab).
- Click Import.
- Click Upload a File.
- Use the drag-and-drop option or click Browse Files.
If you want to import questions from your computer to the Question Library, click Upload a File. Click Download template CSV for an example of how to design questions in a way that enables you to import them successfully.
Create questions
In Brightspace you can create eleven different question types. With each question type, the process and steps are different. It is for this reason that we are not including question-specific instructions in this manual. However, we do touch upon the different question types and their additional options below.
Navigate to the question library and click New. Choose the question type you would like to create:
- True or False (T/F): question that can either be true or false. For example: a different word for peanut is earth nut.
- Multiple Choice (MC): question with multiple options, one of which is correct. For example: Which one is not a nut (a) candle nut (b) tiger nut (c) hazelnut.
- Multi-Select (M-S): question with multiple options, of which multiple can be correct. For example: Select the legumes: (a) peanut (b) soybean (c) tiger nut (d) tamarind
- Written Response (WR): open question of which the answer can be as long as you specify. You can make use of initial text to write the beginning of the answer. For example: Why are green legumes such as green beans classified as vegetables? - I think that ...
- Short Answer (SA): question where the answer consists of one word or a short sentence. For example: An almond actually is not a nut but a ...
- Multi Short Answer (MSA): question where the answer consists of multiple words or a short sentence. For example: Name the three most fatty nuts (per 100g):...
- Fill in the Blanks (FIB): question where the participant has to fill in the blanks of a text. For example: Nuts contain a lot of ... fats, and eating unsalted nuts lowers the ...-cholesterol.
- Matching Questions (MAT): question where the participant has to connect answers to other items. For example: match the correct pairs to each other: walnut, tiger nut, peanut X nut, turnip, legume.
- Ordering Question (ORD): question where the participant has to put the answers in the right order. For example: Which nuts contain the least carbohydrates per 100gr? (from < to >): brazil nuts, cashews, pecans, chestnuts
- Arithmetic (2+2): question that tests mathematical knowledge and/or understanding.
- Significant Figures (x10): question where the participant has to answer in a certain scientific notation and where the answer consists of a specific number or figure.
- Likert questions (LIK): question that the participant answers based on a scale. For example: I eat nuts: very often, often, occasionally, almost never, never.
Click here for een article on the different types of questions with examples.
In the creation window of a question you can give the question a title, but this is not obligatory. The title can come in handy for organizing the questions in your Question Library and to easily find them. The title will only be visible in the question library, which means that it is not visible to students. They can only see the Question Text you have entered.
A few question types do not have a title box (T/F, MC, WR and SA), but even then you can provide a question with a description/title by clicking Options in the top-right corner of the screen and thereafter clicking Add Short Description.
Add media to questions
It is possible to add multimedia, such as images or video, to the question text of a quiz question. This can be done by using the text editor in Edit Question. As soon as you click on it, a menu bar will appear containing a variety of text editing options.
- Insert Stuff. Use this function to directly upload a variety of files to your question text. It is also possible to insert YouTube links, Kaltura Media or embed codes directly.
- Other insert options. With this function it is possible to add an image to the question text. It is possible to place a link, upload the file directly from the current computer, the course offering files or shared files. You can find this by pressing the plus sign.
- Fullscreen Editor. This button opens the Fullscreen Editor, with which you can access the full text editor. The aforementioned options are also available here.
Create questions: additional options
A few useful tips that apply to different question types:
- Feedback: you can provide questions with feedback in two different ways. You can give Overall Feedback at the question itself (for example: tigernut does not refer to the appetizer by Duyvis) and/or Answer Feedback at correct and/or wrong answers (for example: Correct! Peanuts are in fact called earthnuts, as the pod grows under ground). In both cases, the feedback will automatically appear when the student has completed the question.
Note: if you mention the correct answer in the feedback, make sure that the students only have ONE quiz attempt, otherwise the second attempt it will be very easy to give the correct answer!
- The following question types have a feedback option: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multi-Select, Written Response, Short Answer, Multi Short Answer and Fill in the Blanks.
- To add feedback, click Options, select Add Feedback, and fill out your feedback in the text box.
2. Hints: in some cases it can be useful to provide questions with a hint. For instance with mock tests (for example: making a visual display of the connection between the variables can be helpful) or when you want to point the students to a certain source that could be of help to them (for example: use the articles of module one in your answer of this question).
- Hints can be added to all question types.
- To add hints, click Options, select Add Hint, and fill out your hint in the text box.
- Hints are created for each single question, but when creating a quiz you can choose if you want to show or hide all hints created:
- Click Expand optional advanced properties.
- Tick Allow hints.
3. Weighting: you can decide to allow multiple correct answers for a certain question, but to weigh each of them differently. For example: Answer A is worth 100% of the total amount of points that can be achieved (2 points), answer B 50% (1 point) and answer C 0% (0 points).
- The following question types have a weighting option: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multi-Select and Fill in the Blanks.
- To add hints, click Options, select Add Custom Weights.
- The column Weight (%) will appear before each answer option. Fill in what percentage of the total point to be achieved each answer is worth.
