Quiz/Assessment Pools

Quiz Pool.

We're going to construct a test over Chapters 1, 2, and 3 using the pool method. I've told you before that I don't like pools because you lose some tracking features.

I have three Quizzes already in existence. They're Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3. Each quiz has 4 questions. I want to create a test out of them, so I set up TestChaps1-3.

I'm going to load TestChaps1-3. I'm going to click on the text TestChaps1-3 or the Quiz icon.

Click on Add Question. There are two ways to go about this. The easiest is to use the Copy Questions.

Don't click anything yet. How do I want to set up this test? Do I want 2 questions from each chapter or do I want 6 questions selected randomly, where I might have a test that has 3 questions from chapter 1, 3 questions from chapter 2, and none from chapter 3? Do I want them separated by chapter (e.g., questions 1 and 2 are from chapter 1, etc.) or randomly (e.g., #1 from chapter 3, #2 from chapter 1, etc.)? The use of Section Headers will depend on how you want to organize your test. My problem is that I want six questions selected from 12.

The easiest way to copy questions is to use Copy Questions, so I clicked that link. There's a drop-down box that will show you the names of all your quizzes. I want to work with chapter 1 first.

It shows me all the questions in that quiz. I can checkmark "Copy all questions" or I can put checkmarks on the ones I want to import. It will also carry the keywords (if I've set those up). This will add the questions from the specified quiz. Your test will look like a Quiz because you have individual questions if I were to click OK.

But you want a pool of questions, so I'll back out of Copy Questions and click on Pool Item Editor. This option depends on keywords. If I don't have keywords set, I'll need to go back into my three quizzes and set them. (Go back to the Utilities submenu for each quiz and click on Add to Pool. Type in your keyword.) Obviously, the keyword for chapter 1 will be chap1; chapter 2, chap2; chapter 3, chap3, or do whatever you want. I can set up a second keyword for all three: testchaps1-3. I would use the first keyword if I wanted to keep the chapters separate from one another. You're not going to need a Section Header if you're doing a pool. It's actually built into Pool Item Editor. I would use the second keyword (testchaps1-3) if I wanted to draw questions from all three chapters and I didn't care if they were all mixed up. Here's what the screen looks like.

Select. How many questions do you want? You can have 1 to 100.
Keywords to Match. Click the Add link to add a keyword.
The next choices are optional, but you could look for difficult questions (if you coded them) that had at least two points and questions that fit that criteria would be selected.
Ignored Questions Types. Click any that you don't want.
Use questions from this section only. The default will look for questions in this course and in the LOR. If checked, it only looks in this course (section).
I clicked save and then did it two more times

There are only four questions for chapter 1. When I ran a preview, it selected #1 and #3 for Q1; #4 and #2 for Q2; nothing for Q3 (because there are only four questions.) In other words, you won't get duplicate/repeated questions.

If you want to put in a heading, you'll have to put in a Section Header before the question. An alternative would be to put something in the Content tab Directions box (e.g., Chapter 1: Questions 1-10; Chapter 2: Questions 11-20; etc.). Just remember that because you are working with a pool, you won't be able to Export Submission and Grade Data.

Assessment Pool

I've converted my TestChaps1-3, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 to assessments. (It's under Utilities. Just select the quiz you want converted and Angel copies it and turns the copy into an Assessment. In other words, your Quiz isn't destroyed.) I want to make a pool for TestChaps1-3 from the three chapter quizzes. I click on "TestChaps1-3" or the icon and get this screen.

Do you see the blue "Question Set: This should have a title?" I'm clicking on Add Question just under that. I don't want to Add Question Set yet, because I don't know what you want to do. Now I have this picture:

The top part are the kinds of things you'll see in Quiz. It's the bottom stuff we're interested in. This works a little different from Quiz pool.
Copy and Paste Questions. This is the same as Import Questions in Quiz, but you'd better be in a simple text editor. (No MSWord). You'd be better off importing questions into a Quiz and converting, but do whatever you want. Just don't come back whinning to me about your troubles.
Browse Question Bank and Search Question Bank are useful and this would be a good way to start this process if you had anything loaded in the Question Bank, but, at this point, you probably don't.
If you want to load questions into your TestChaps1-3, we have to do Copy questions from an assessment. I'm going to click on that link and it's going to take me to a bizzare-looking screen. I think I might be in Manage>Question Bank Manager.

There's a big, empty window below, but first you have to find the Assessment in the "Choose Assessment" drop-down list. Fortunately, it's by semester. If you have tons of Assessments, I think it's confusing to find the right one. (It's probably my naming conventions.) My picture above shows you that I've chosen Chapter 1. I'm going to click the Go button to the right of the selection to load these questions and here is the result:

Below is my TestChaps1-3. All the chapter 1 questions are loaded. If I want to separate chapter 1 from chapter 2, I'd Add Question Set.

I'm tired of this, so I'm going to go into Question Bank Manager and load Chapter 1,Chapter 2, and Chapter 3. I go to the Manage tab and click on the Question Bank Manager link.

This is weird. Remember how we have submenus (Setting, Report, Utilities, Delete) when the cursor moved over the area just below the Quiz title? This is different. There are + and - signs to expand and hide the next level. There's an inverted triangle at the end of each line. Click on that and it expands to expose Add subfolder, Add question, Rename, Delete. I'm going to Add subfolder. I'll name it. I'll open the subfolder and Add question.

To add Chapter 2, I'm going to click at the end of "2009SP_MUSI_3347_70..." because Chapter 2 is equal to Chapter 1, not a subfolder of Chapter 1.

They're loaded. Do you want to see something weird? I've edited the first question in Chapter 1. I clicked the inverted triangle and chose Edit. I edited the question and then clicked OK. Because I edited it, it hides "Multiple Choice." Why? I don't know unless it's helping keep track of questions I've edited. I think it's weird. The next time I come back, "Multiple Choice" will be back.


Now that I have my questions loaded, I'm ready to do a pool for TestChaps1-3. Before I just was adding the questions. This time, I'm going to do a pool. I have to go back to TestChaps1-3, click on the title or the icon, then click on Question Pool Editor. This is what I get:

Question Title. If I'm doing one chapter at a time, this is Chapter 1. If I'm doing all of them, then it's Test Chapters 1-3. "This question" is misleading, because there could be 10 questions. It should be "Enter an optional title for this question set."
Number of questions. How many do you want displayed.
Question Pool Points. Interesting. You could set up a weighting effect. Take 10 questions from Chapter 1 (even though I only have 4) and say they're worth 20 points and Chapter 2, 10 questions, 10 points.
I'm ready to look for questions. If I don't touch anything and click the search button, it's going to load all the questions in the Question Bank Manager and I can deselect the ones I don't want.
Limit results by keyword. If I click "Choose keywords," I get this window.

I've already selected Chap1 and I'm ready to click save. (But I won't.) Instead, I want to click "Choose folders," and I get this:

I'll put a checkmark on the Chapter 1 box. There's also Limit by Questions Type and Limit by difficulty level. (You know darn well that I ain't got any Standards or Objectives! But that's another option and I could if I did.)

I'm going to select 8 questions from all the questions in my question bank. Do you see the difference between individual questions and a pool?

If I start the Assessment, this is what I get.


And that's that. Any questions? I'll take you back to the Index page.