Test Generator Question Bank

Test Generator’s Question Bank (QB) is a repository, or "container" where test authors/administrators can store and manage one or many question banks. Question banks are organized by Subject and represented in the tree view as folders or directories.

Note: the terms "subject", "topic" "folder", "directory" and "bank" are used interchangeably.

Uses

From Test Wizard…

Create a test composed of questions randomly selected from one or more banks

Under Question Bank…

Create a test bank classification system.
Create one/many question banks.
Create questions directly in the banks.
Import questions between banks.
Create sub categories (topics, subjects).

During Test Creation/Editing…

Create questions and associate them with QB subjects.
Create tests using questions imported from one or several question banks.
Export subject-labeled questions from a test into the appropriate question bank.

Location

At installation, the Question Bank contains two directories/banks, Sample Subject and Questions without a subject. The Questions without a subject directory is a default directory under Question Bank. The Sample Subject directory contains two sub-directories, CPR and Math - examples for your review.

Once you establish your Question Bank and create questions in it, the number of questions is visible above the question bank table.

Best Practices

In order to use the Question Bank effectively, we recommend planning, organizing and creating your subject categories in advance. This is especially helpful if more than one test author will be using and/or contributing items to it. Once your subject categories are created, it's easier to assign subjects to your questions during test authoring. A little front-end planning will save you time later on.

Note: Unlike earlier versions of TG, you can now create questions directly in a bank. This assumes the questions you are adding to a bank have been evaluated in an actual test environment and found to be good questions. If you unsure of the quality of the question, we recommend you:

Note: We recognize that this level of analysis may not be practical for everyone.

If you already have tests meets your standard of acceptability, here are some options:

Alternatives include not using the Question Bank, or exporting any-and-all questions into the Question Bank regardless of whether or not they have undergone any level of analysis. We do not recommend this approach.

How To...

Creating the Sample Subject question bank

The following tutorial describes how we created the Sample Subject question bank. This is one approach and if you plan on using the Question Bank, we encourage you to plan and organize a question bank strategy that works for you.

How the Sample Subject bank was created:

Under the tree view, right-click the TG Question Bank module.
Select New Subject and name it Sample Subject. Click the OK button.
Right-click the new Sample Subject icon and select New Subject Under: Sample Subject.
Name the new subject CPR and click the OK button.
Right-click the CPR icon and select New Subject Under: CPR.
Name the new subject, "Subject 1". Click the OK button.
Repeat steps 5 and 6, creating Subjects 2 through 4

To create the Math bank, we repeated steps 3 through 7, adding more sub-topics. In this example, the Sample Subject directory is the root bank. The sub-directories, CPR and Math Sampler, are nested under the root (Sample Subject) bank. In turn, each of these banks contains a set of sub-directories.

Creating the Sample Class

Next, we created the Sample Class and two test examples, CPR and Math Sampler. We manually created and edited the questions in each test. By manually created we mean we typed the question and answer text in one question at a time. We also selected various question and test parameters that included assigning subjects to each question. The subjects were chosen from the Sample Subject bank described above.

For a step-by-step tutorial on creating your own Classes and Tests, please review QuickStart under the Contents section of TG Help.

Question Bank and Test Authoring Options

As a test author, you have various test creation options. For more details, please review Test Authoring Options.

Question Bank Policies

Question Bank Organization

Question Banks can contain one or multiple question banks. Banks store questions not tests and can be organized by:

objectives
level of difficulty
level of mastery
subject area
chronology
instructor
study area
etc.

Banks can be organized in nested groups (example)

* Subject_1
- Sub-subject_1.1
. Sub/Sub-subject_1.1.1
. Sub/sub/sub-subject_1.1.1.1

Duplication

Duplicate questions can be stored in different banks.

Editing

Beginning with TG 2.4.9, questions can be created, edited and deleted from individual banks.

Note: If a test bank question also exists in one or more tests and the question is edited in the bank, the resulting changes do not "ripple through" to each test containing that same question.

Question Bank Questions can be imported and modified within a test. These modifications do not affect the original Question Bank question. The test author can a) delete the original question, or b) keep both.

Question editing can also be done at a test level. Assumptions:

The test has not been given, or
The published/taken test has been saved (File > Save As) as a new, un-published test. The new test is treated as a temporary editing container. Once edited, these questions can be re-imported into the Question Bank. The temporary editing-container test can then be deleted.

Parameters

Question Bank questions retain the test parameters assigned to the original question.

Banks

There are two major banks, the Test Generator Question Bank and the Test Question Bank. The Question Bank refers to the application question bank and Test Question Bank refers to TG’s randomization engine, a set of randomization options applied at a test level. For more details, review Question Banks Overview.

Subjects

The Question Bank can be created and used for a variety of purposes. Examples include:

Select and Sort and Group

When a subject is clicked under TG Question Bank, all the questions assigned to that subject appear on the right side of the window. Above the questions is a set of toolbar options: Sort Ascending, Sort Descending, Select Records and Group Records. These options are organized as follows: