Overview: You may want to use a question bank, or banks, for your assessment if you’d like the learner to see a randomised list of assessment questions that change every time they complete the assessment. This provides a more robust final assessment and requires the learner to think more critically on each assessment attempt. These are our suggestions on settings that we have found to be the most reliable and learner-friendly. Although, Evolve is a very powerful tool, so other settings and options are available to you.
Start from: any existing course in Evolve.
Setting up the Question Bank/s Extension
Within your course:
- Select the Extensions tab (the puzzle piece) in the left menu bar.
- Find the Question Banks extension and tick to enable.
- Select the title Question Banks to edit.
You will be taken into the Question Banks settings, where you can build the question banks to your requirements.
- Select the + icon to add a new question bank.
A pop-up will then show, where you can title the question bank and choose the type of multiple choice questions (MCQs) you want to use for this question bank and hit the Select button.
- You can select either a Multiple Choice Question or a Graphic Multiple Choice Question.
- A Multiple Choice Question allows you to set multiple answers to a single question.
- A Graphic Multiple Choice Question allows you to set multiple answers with added images to a single question.
- You can only have one type of question per question bank.
Note: You can have as many question banks as you prefer for your assessment. If you want all your assessment questions to come from one pool of questions, we suggest you use one question bank overall. However, if you want to split your question banks by topic or type of questions, you can have a question bank for each.
Using a Multiple Choice Question Bank
- Your titled question bank will then show in the column underneath the ‘+’.
- Select the title to reveal the settings to add your questions.
To add a question:
- Select the + icon next to the question bank title. Then select each question in the second column to edit the question.
- Starting with the General tab, here you will be able to add the question and any instruction text.
- Add a Title for each question. We like to add the whole question into this title, as this will help you find the question for edits in future.
- Add the main question to the Question area.
Note: We DO NOT add a Display Title here, as this will be taken from the MCQ components on the assessment page.
On the Answers tab, this is where you add the various answer choices the learner will see. You can add as many answers as you prefer.
- Select Add Answer, then select the item to see a dropdown which includes an Answer text area and a toggle to specify if the answer is correct.
- Add your Answer text and toggle on If the answer the correct option? for each, as is relevant.
Note: The number of answers you can mark as correct will be based on how you set the question behaviour.
On the Behaviour tab, this is where you set the number of question attempts, randomization of answers, how many selectable items and individual item feedback. As this is for a general assessment, we suggest the following settings:
- For Attempts, choose 1 — this is important for the completion of the assessment.
- Toggle off Display Attempts Counter.
- Toggle on Randomize Answers — this will show the learner the answers in a different order each time.
- Select the number of Selectable Items – this is the number of answers you want the learner to be able to select. This can be multiple if it’s a ‘Select all that apply’ question, if it’s a normal question select 1.
- Toggle off Use custom item prefix.
- Toggle off Individual item feedback — for assessments, we use the general feedback settings.
- Toggle on Auto Submit the Question?
On the Feedback tab, this is where you can add in feedback. As this is a final assessment, we suggest not providing any feedback, as this ensures your assessment remains intensive, and the learner isn’t given the answer.
On the Appearance tab, this is where you set how the answers display to the learner based on their device type. We set the number of Items per row as the following:
- Desktop — 2
- Tablet — 2
- Mobile — 1
- Follow steps 2-8 for every question you want to add to your question bank.
Using a Graphic Multiple Choice Question Bank
This will be very similar to the settings for a Multiple Choice Question, however there will be further steps when adding your answers.
On the Answers tab, this is where you add the various answer choices the learner will see. You can add as many answers as you prefer.
- Select Add Answer, then select the item to see a dropdown which includes an Answer text area, an Item Image, advanced settings per device for the image, Alt Text and a toggle to specify if the answer is correct.
- Add your Item Image by selecting the + icon and choosing from your asset bank, by searching in the top bar, or by adding a new image with the top right-corner ‘+’.
- We suggest you toggle off the Set Image Per Device Size? area underneath Item Image Advanced Settings.
Note: The images will display as the same size as the image you selected. We suggest that you size your images to 512 pixels wide and no larger than 512 pixels high to ensure the best viewing experience by all learners on all devices.
- Add Alt Text in the area provided, to describe the image to learners who are using screen reader technology to work through your course.
- Add Item Text in the area if it’s required to understand the answer image.
- Toggle on If the answer the correct option? for the answer, as is relevant.
Note: The number of answers you can mark as correct will be based on how you set the question behaviour.
Setting the Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) to Use the Question Bank/s
This is how you can link the set multiple choice questions on your assessment page to the relevant question bank.
You will need to set up your assessment page with the relevant multiple choice question components or graphic multiple choice question components first. These act as a target for the relevant question bank.
Please see our guide on ‘Evolve Course Completion’ to see the steps to set up this page.
These following steps are relevant to both types of question banks, the multiple choice question and the graphic multiple choice question banks.
- Once your assessment page is set up, navigate to the first multiple choice
- question component.
- Select the component to open the settings column.
In the General area:
- Add a Display Title for the question. We suggest numbering your questions on the page, so that the learner knows which question they are on, such as ‘Question 1’. Ignore all the rest of the areas, these will be filled in by the questions in the bank.
At the top of the third column, use the dropdown to navigate to Behavior.
Once the Behavior screen is showing, use the following settings:
- Toggle on Use Question Bank.
- Under Select Question Bank, choose the relevant question bank you want this question to show.
- Mirror the rest of the settings you set as the behaviour in your question bank, as on steps 5 above.
- Ignore the rest of the dropdown settings and move on to the next component.
- Follow steps 2-6 on every question component on your assessment page.