Tips on Creating and Managing Large Question Banks

Create & manage large question banks

Introduction

Create and manage question bank efficiently

While the majority of academic processes are being streamlined manually; Creating and managing questions still follows a manual approach, it is feasible to manage the question bank manually when the question bank is small, but when the question volume is high, the question bank can turn out to be a challenge.

Various universities and colleges enroll students for 100s of different courses, in that case, manual handling of question papers for each of the courses can take a long time and may increase the chances of confusion and question paper leakage.

What are Question Banks?

Question banks are the set of questions that are picked up from different subjects and topics, with varying difficulty and weightage in the final question paper.

The question banks serve as a base for the creation of the final question paper. An ideal question bank is one that has a sufficient number of questions of different difficulty picked up from different topics.

What is the Question Bank Management Systems?

Question bank management systems are cloud-integrated digital interfaces that can be utilized for storing and managing a large question bank in a more structured and efficient way. These interfaces are can serve as a great tool for the universities and colleges which enroll a large number of students for a variety of courses.

Another application of Question Bank Management Systems is that these systems can be used for repurposing the questions and creating question papers with ease.

Advantages of Question Bank Management Systems

advantages if question bank management

With the novel question bank management systems, it is easier to handle the question banks, these systems enable the academic staff to sort, filter, organize and repurpose the questions. These systems also support the generation of the question paper of required difficulty level and topic-wise weightage.

Question bank management can save time, and can help the academic staff work more efficiently with greater accuracy.

The question bank databases are secure and allow access to only authorized people, this can be done using the ‘role based access‘ feature of Question bank management system.

Different user roles of the question bank management system help the administrator to define the job role and restrict or allow access to an individual to different parts of the system.

Another major advantage of the question bank management system is that the activity of every user is completely traceable.

Considering the advantages, the majority of the reputed institutes are now opting for these question bank management systems.

If you want to increase the efficiency of your staff in managing the question bank, here are certain things you need to know.

Steps to Create and Manage Large Question Banks

Steps to create question bank

Summary of Steps and Quick Insights

The question bank generation process starts with the identification of topics under the subject, one should start with understanding the overall weightage of topics under the subject.

Once the questions are chosen, the next step would be to save these questions and sort them according to the difficulty level, each of the questions should be assigned a difficulty level.

The next and final step would be to create the question papers, the digital question bank management systems support the user to generate the question paper on the basis of available question banks. The user has to define the overall difficulty of the question paper, and topic-wise weightage of the question paper.

The question bank and created question papers get automatically saved in the cloud-based database, which allows access only to those who have the login credentials, which totally nullifies the chances of question paper leakage.

1. Creation of question categories in the question bank

In order to efficiently manage the question bank, one must be able to sort and filter the questions as and when needed, few of the important parameters for categorizing the questions in the question bank are-

  1. The difficulty level
  2. Subject
  3. Topic
  4. Question wise marks
  5. Question type

Two methods can add the questions in the system, one is the manual method and another is the bulk import method.

Steps to add the questions manually-

  1. Login to the question bank management system
  2. Create the required subject and topic
  3. Click on “new question”
  4. Fill the required details (Question type, marks per question, subject and topic to which the question belongs)

The question bank once created can be previewed and downloaded in the form of a PDF document.

Steps to add the questions in bulk-

  1. Login to the system, download the bulk question import template
  2. Fill out the template with required fields which include- Actual question, its difficulty level, weightage, subject and topic
  3. The user can also attach images (if any) to the question
  4. Once the template is saved, the same can be imported by clicking on the “Bulk import” option in the question bank management system.
  5. The system allows editing of the questions after importing if required.

Here is the demonstration of the same-

2. Adding question bank questions to a test

The process of adding questions to a test starts with defining the test parameters, the novel question bank management systems allow the user to create the question paper using the questing question bank. 

Here are the steps to create a new test using the existing question bank

  1. Login to the Question Bank Management System
  2. Go to “Exam Management”
  3. Click on “Create Exam”
  4. In the pop up window, select the required exam configuration
  5. Select the questions to be added in the system, the questions can be sorted on the basis of subject, topic, Marks per question, and question type.
  6. Once all the parameters are defined, the user can create the test with the required questions and difficulty level.

Managing questions in a question bank

Managing the question bank is a matter of a few clicks, the user can have insights into the question bank

Step 1

Login to the Question Bank Management System 

Step 2

Select the “Question bank” tab and then click on “QB analytics” button

Step 3

Select the applicable values for filters of Question type, difficulty level and marks per question

Step 4

Click on the “Show” button and the data of questions that match the defined criteria will be shown at the bottom of the page. Subject and topic-wise question count will be displayed.

Here are the certain question parameters that can be used to sort the questions available in the question bank management system-

Question type

The question bank data can be sorted using a defined Question type while importing the question, various question types available in the Eklavvya system include-

  • Multiple choice questions (MCQs)
  • Subjective questions
  • Fill in the blank
  • True or false questions
  • Match the pair
  • Multiselect type
  • Programming type

Difficulty level for chosen question type

Filter of difficulty level can be applied, this can help in question paper creation as the question paper contains a pre-defined proportion of difficult, moderate and easy questions

  • Basic
  • Easy
  • Moderate
  • Hard
  • Difficult

Marks per question

In this field you can choose desired marks per question

Here is a demo of “how you can manage the question bank using-

Question Bank System Adoption by Examination Council in Africa

Examination Council of Lesotho has successfully adopted Eklavvya platform for simplification of question bank management and exam question paper generation

With Eklavvya, the Examination Council of Lesotho can now easily manage end to end exam process right from item bank creation with role-based security to secure question papers for various exam sessions according to the syllabus.

ECOL finally switched to a system that they can trust.

Here is the feedback from CEO of the Examination Council of Lesotho-Africa

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