There are three main ways to get a question bank created in Moodle: Creating them manually in your course, importing them from a digital file, and importing/exporting between two courses in Moodle.

As a reminder, if any steps are confusing or intimidating, please don't hesitate to contact the ATC. We'll be happy to help you out or even take care of the question banks ourselves if you'd prefer: Requesting Help for Question Bank Imports.

Create Questions in Moodle

Creating questions through Moodle is the most direct way to get a small number of questions into your course.

Note: This can be tedious if you have a large sample of questions since you will need to create them one at a time.

1. Click on More at the top of your course and select Question Bank.
2. On the following page, in the Question bank section, select Questions.
3. Select the category that you want to add the question to, then click Create a new question.
   • You will want to have a category created beforehand to store your new questions in. To create a category, click on Categories in the Question bank section (from step 2) and add a new category.
4. Select the question type that you want to create and click Add.
5. Create a Question name and Question text.
   • The name is simply what you will see in the question bank as the instructor. The question text is what the student sees in the quiz.
6. Create the correct and incorrect Answers for the question, if it isn't an open-ended essay question. When selecting a grade value, remember that 100% will give full credit for that question.
7. Save changes.

Import from a Digital File

Importing a question bank from a digital file is the quickest way to get a large number of questions into a course.

The most common sources of these banks are:

A) Downloaded from a Textbook or publisher's website

Usually, but not always, there will be a download site with a file, file or a file on the instructor CD, that is in a format directly importable to Moodle. If that is the case, we can import questions without you having to do any formatting. 

B) Created with Microsoft Word or other word processor -

To import questions from a Word Doc, there are two formats we can work from. The first is AIKEN format. This format does not allow any question types other then multiple choice and true and false questions to be imported. The other .doc format that can be imported is Moodle GIFT. This format will import multiple choice, true and false, fill-in, and matching questions, but you have to include coded instructions in the questions.

Moving Question Banks Between Courses

 If you have a question bank(s) already created in one course and would like an identical bank in a different course, you can easily copy and move them.

The steps to do so are:

1) Export the Question Bank that you want to have in a different course.

2) Import the Question Bank into the target course.

You will need to make sure you are choosing the same format while Importing as you chose to Export. Ex: If exported as GIFT, you must import as GIFT as well.