Overview of question banking

Organizing and navigating test questions

Created by Mustafa Ekim / July, 2022

The central repository for storing all your test questions is known as the question bank. By storing your test questions in a centralized location, you can utilize them across various tests and create question pools, allowing for randomized questioning within a test.

With the question bank, you can easily administer and retrieve the desired test questions by utilizing folders and tags to organize the stored questions for efficient management.

Overview

All questions within the question bank are organized into folders, and the system automatically indexes the tags associated with each question in a folder. This creates a dynamic question retrieval panel that enables users to navigate through their stored questions by selecting specific folders and tags. Let's explore this in further detail.

Folders

Categorizing your questions is primarily achieved through the use of folders, which can contain individual questions. By selecting a folder, the question bank provides a means to navigate and locate your questions.

Tags

Test questions can be further classified by utilizing tags. Tags consist of a pair of name and value, where name represents the classification category, and value represents the specific attribute. For instance, examples of tags include:

Tag nameTag value
LevelB1
SubjectGeography
ClassAC101
Year2023
Both the tag name and the tag  value can have any text value.

Simply writing the tag name and value is all that's needed to assign any number of tags to your test questions, making the process of organizing and categorizing questions a quick and easy task.

Navigating the questions with the question bank

Upon accessing the question bank, a list of folders is displayed. Once you select a folder, an index of all the assigned tags for the questions in that folder is presented. To streamline the process of retrieving questions, you have the option to select specific tags and narrow down the list of questions accordingly.

  1. Select a folder
    1. You have the choice to select tags to refine the list of questions and narrow down your search.
      1. Click on the List questions button located at the top right of the panel.

        Selecting a folder

        To select a folder, use the dropdown menu located at the top left of the panel, where the available folders are displayed along with the number of questions stored in each folder.

        1. By using the Star icon located next to the dropdown list, you can mark a folder as the default selection, which will make it the automatically selected folder when accessing the question bank.
          1. By default, folders are sorted based on the number of questions they contain. If you prefer to sort folders alphabetically by name, you can check the A-Z option located next to the dropdown menu.

            Narrowing down the list of questions to retrieve by selecting tags

            Each tag is displayed along with its name and the various values that have been assigned to it by the questions. 

            Retrieving questions associated with a tag

            To retrieve questions associated with a particular tag, you can select the checkbox next to the tag name.

            Retrieving questions that have been assigned the level tag<br>
            Retrieving questions that have been assigned the level tag

            Selecting one or multiple tag values for a particular tag

            Alternatively, you can click on a specific tag value to retrieve only those questions that have been assigned that particular value.

            Retrieving questions assigned to the
            Retrieving questions assigned to the "beginner" value of the level tag

            By selecting multiple values for a tag, you can broaden the search and retrieve a greater number of questions, as the system will retrieve all questions that have been assigned the tag with any of the selected values.

            The system will retrieve questions that have been assigned to either the year:2021 or year:2022 tags, or to both of them combined.
            The system will retrieve questions that have been assigned to either the year:2021 or year:2022 tags, or to both of them combined.

            Selecting multiple values across different tags

            By selecting values from different tags, the list of retrieved questions can be narrowed down, as the system will only retrieve questions that have been assigned both of the selected tags and their respective values.

            The system will only retrieve questions that have been assigned both the level:beginner tag and the year tag with either the value 2021 or 2022.
            The system will only retrieve questions that have been assigned both the level:beginner tag and the year tag with either the value 2021 or 2022.

            Excluding questions assigned to a specific tag

            To exclude a tag from the search, you can double-click on the checkbox next to the tag name, which will mark it as red. If a tag has been marked for exclusion, all questions that have been assigned to that tag will be filtered out and not included in the retrieved list.

            Questions that have been assigned the year tag will not be retrieved by the system.
            Questions that have been assigned the year tag will not be retrieved by the system.

            Excluding questions assigned to a specific tag value

            To exclude questions that have been assigned a specific value for a tag, you can double-click on the tag value, and the tag value will be marked in red, indicating that questions assigned to that value will be excluded from the retrieved list.

            Excluding only the questions that have been assigned the year:2021 tag.<br>
            Excluding only the questions that have been assigned the year:2021 tag.

            Advanced filter queries

            A single query can combine all the filtering methods, such as selecting questions with a specific tag while excluding questions assigned a particular tag value, and so on.

            To retrieve questions that have been assigned both the level:beginner and subject:algebra tags but not the year:2021 tag, you can use a query that combines these filter conditions.
            To retrieve questions that have been assigned both the level:beginner and subject:algebra tags but not the year:2021 tag, you can use a query that combines these filter conditions.

            Author

            Mustafa Ekim

            Mustafa Ekim, founder of TestInvite and QuizCV, brings nearly a decade of expertise in building online assessment platforms for custom, secure tests.
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