Item Banks allow you to create a repository of assessment questions that you can then use within course assessments. Item banks can be created in your Personal and Group Resources.

The current version of Items Banks gives instructors the ability to:

• Create an item bank in resources.
• Add questions to item banks.
• Add questions from an item bank to an assessment.
• Add a random selection of questions from item banks to an assessment.
• Convert an existing test/quiz question bank to an item bank. Learn more here.

For more information on Schoology Assessments, see this article.

Table of Contents

• Create Item Banks
• Create Assessment Questions in an Item Bank
• Add Questions from an Item Bank to an Assessment
• Coming Soon to Item Banks

Create Item Banks

Item banks can be created in Personal and Group Resources.

To create an item bank, follow these steps:

1. Click Resources in the header and choose Personal or Group Resources from the left menu.
2. Click the Collection or Group in which you'd like to add an item bank.
3. Click Add Resources.
4. Select Add Item Bank.
   
5. Enter a title and optional description for the item bank and click Create to complete.
   

To edit the name or description of an item bank:

1. Click the item bank in your Resources.
2. Click Actions to the right of the item bank.
3. Select Edit Name and Description.
   
4. Enter any changes and click Save to complete.

To move an item bank to another collection in Resources:

1. Click the item bank in your Resources.
2. Click Actions to the right of the item bank.
3. Select Move.
   
   Alternatively, click the gear icon to the right of the item bank directly in Resources and select Move to.
4. Select the desired Collection and Folder.
5. Click Move to complete.

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Create Assessment Questions in an Item Bank

To create a question in an item bank, follow these steps:

1. Click the item bank in your Resources.
2. Under Create Items, select an item type.
   
3. Fill out the question form.
4. Click Create Question to complete.

 To edit a question in an item bank:

1. Click the question in the item bank.
2. Enter any changes.
3. Click Save to complete. 

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Add Questions from an Item Bank to an Assessment

Once you have an item bank in Schoology, you can build assessments with items from the banks. You can add individual questions from an item bank or you can add a randomized block of items from one or more item banks when you create your assessment. See Coming Soon to Item Banks for more information on future additions to item banks.

To add individual questions from item banks to an assessment:

1. In your course, create an assessment or select the name of the assessment into which you'd like to add items.
2. In the Questions area, click Add From Item Bank.
   
3. Navigate to the item bank you would like to import items from.
4. Check the box next to each item you'd like to import. Use the Select all option to add all items.
5. Enter the Set Points for each item. If none is set, it defaults to 1.
6. Selected items are highlighted at the bottom for ease of reference. Use the links at the top to explore multiple item banks and select items from several banks.
7. Once you are finished selecting items, click Add Items.
8. To reorder items, drag and drop any item to the desired order.

To add a random selection of items from one or more item banks to an assessment:

1. In your course, create an assessment or select the name of the assessment into which you'd like to add items.
2. In the Questions area, click Add from Item Bank.
3. Navigate to the item bank you would like to import items from.
4. Click Add Randomized Items.
   
5. In the Add Randomized Items window, enter:
   • The number of items that you want to generate from the bank.
   • How many points each item is worth.
     
6. Click Add Items.
7. Selected items are highlighted at the bottom for ease of reference. Use the links at the top to explore multiple item banks and select additional randomized items from several banks.
   
   Notes:

   • Once you select randomized items, you cannot add individual questions in the same selection sequence. If you need to select additional individual items, complete the steps to add randomized items and then follow the steps above to add individual questions from an item bank.
   • You may add both randomized items and individual items from the same item bank. Items that have been individually added to the assessment that are duplicates of items in the randomized set will display an error message in the preview and student view. You may remove the duplicate individual item from the assessment to prevent this error message. Alternatively, you can edit the item bank to remove the question you want to include individually instead. 
8. Click Add Items to complete. Each set of randomized items is displayed as a single block in the Questions area.

Above, randomized items added to an assessment. In this example, two sets of randomized items have been added to the assessment. Questions 1-3 contain three randomly selected questions from ELA Question Bank II and Questions 4-5 contain two randomly selected questions from Catcher in the Rye Item Bank.

Each assessment will contain the determined number of items from the selected item bank(s). Each student in the course receives a unique set of items. Even if students receive a few of the same items, they will appear in a different order, so no assessment is alike. This is helpful in maintaining the validity of your assessment results.

If you need to make any adjustments, click the More Optionsmenu on each item and select from two options:

Edit — Edit the number of items that you want to generate from the bank and how many points per item.
Delete — Removes the items from the assessment. You cannot restore a deleted item.

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Coming Soon to Item Banks

Portability

We will be adding portable functionality to Item Banks, including:

• Copy an item bank.
• Copy one or multiple items to another item bank.
• Add items from a course assessment to an item bank.
• Import external item banks as course assessment item banks

Create Item Banks from within an Assessment

We will be adding the ability to create an item bank directly within an assessment.

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