Using Question Banks in Online Exercises

This is where question banks pay off. An online exercise does not hold questions of its own: you build it out of sections, and you fill each section with question banks.

The structure

Online Exercise
└── Section
    ├── Question Bank A
    └── Question Bank B

• Sections are created in the exercise and are what learners see on the question paper.
• Banks are attached to a section. One section can hold several banks.

Add a bank to a section

Open the exercise and go to the Add Question Bank tab. Inside an empty section you get three choices:

• Create Question Bank: build a new bank from scratch, which is created and linked to this section in one step.
• Link Question Bank: attach a bank you already have.
• Upload Question Bank: create a bank by importing a file.

Once a section has at least one bank, use Add New Question Bank to add another, and Add New Section to start a new section.

Linking an existing bank

1. Click Link Question Bank. A window opens titled Link existing questing bank.
2. Find the bank using the Search question bank box or the Filter by topic dropdown. The table shows QB Name (with its question count), Topic and QB ID, Subject, Exam, Difficulty, and Question Type.
3. Click + LINK on the bank you want. The button changes to UNLINK.
4. Link as many banks as the section needs, then click Close.

You will see "Question bank linked successfully".

Linking is live, not a copy

This is the single most important thing to understand about question banks.

[!Important] Linking attaches a reference to the bank. Nothing is copied into the exercise. Any change you make to the bank is immediately reflected in every exercise where it is linked. Editing a question changes it everywhere, and deleting a question removes it everywhere.

The product states it twice, on the link option and on each linked bank: "any changes made to the linked question bank will impact the questions in this exercise", and "Any changes made to this question bank will be reflected in all other exercises where it is added".

Building a mixed-difficulty paper

A random pull cannot be filtered by difficulty or topic, and a bank carries only one difficulty. So you build a mixed paper by linking several banks into one section:

• Section "Physics" with three linked banks: Easy (pull 5 at random), Medium (pull 3), Hard (pull 2).

Each bank's count is set independently in Question Bank Settings.

Marks

Marks and negative marks come from the question in the bank and cannot be changed from inside the exercise. If a question needs a different weight in a different test, it has to be a separate question.

What each linked bank row tells you

Under each linked bank you will see one of:

• "Using {n} out of {total} questions"
• "Manually selecting {n} out of {total} questions"
• "Automatically selecting {n} out of {total} questions"

For random selection the actual questions are not shown, because they are picked at the moment a learner attempts the test.

Removing a bank or a section

• Remove on a linked bank asks "Are you sure you want to remove this question bank from the assessment! You can always add it later." and the confirm button is Yes, Remove. This only unlinks it. The bank and its questions are untouched.
• Deleting a section asks "Are you sure, you want to delete this Section from this exercise?" with Yes, Delete.

Question banks and AI Viva

AI Viva sessions also draw their questions from a bank. Choose Link from an Existing Question Bank when setting up the viva, then link a single bank and use the same settings window to choose how many of its questions are used.

What's next

Continue to Question Bank Settings: Random or Manual.