Creating your Question Library in Brightspace from Sakai Question Pools
The Question Pools have changed in the migration from Sakai to Brightspace. These steps will help in rebuilding an instructor’s question pools in Brightspace’s Question Library.
The following will elaborate on tidying up quizzes as they appear post-migration, but take comfort in the fact that creating new testing material in Brightspace will be straightforward (or, at least, similar to what instructors did in Sakai).
Creating a Brightspace Quiz (D2L link)
Managing the Question Library (D2L link)
Sakai “Question Pools” are groups of questions managed across a user account that can be shared amongst instructors. Typically, creating a quiz section wherein a Question Pool is linked for the purpose of randomly drawing a specified number of questions from the Question Pool's full list.
Brightspace “Question Pools” are exclusively a section of a single quiz into which questions will be drawn. These questions must be stored first in a repository called the “Question Library”.
Thus, Brightspace’s equivalent is the Question Library, and Question Pools are the specific instances of randomly drawn questions.
The Question Library
Like Sakai’s Question Pools, using the Question Library will allow instructors to reuse questions within a course, and also transfer them to new courses using the Copy Course Components feature (video walk through available here: https://cpibrock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BLEDOCU/pages/883621919). Instructors can create sections within the Question Library to organize their question content, and build the parts of particular quizzes as previously done in Sakai.
Instructors may find that creating all their questions first in the Question Library is ideal for storage and sharing. Instructors can also consolidate questions created within Quizzes (and Surveys and Self Assessments) by importing them back into the Question Library.
A note on migration results:
The quizzes have been “flattened” and any sections or question pools will appear in their entirety‒no random draw or shuffling, just every potential question from the source in one spot. This has likely resulted in some very large quizzes with questions named as numbers (which correspond with the Sakai categories or Question Pools, but are a bit awkward).
While instructors can be confident that all of their questions are there, any reference to Question Pools or the questions’ existence outside of an individual quiz (i.e. at the user account level) has been lost. This also means that things instructors may have had in Sakai Question Pools but not part of actual Quizzes have not been migrated.
Recreating Sakai Question Pools in Brightspace Quizzes
To move forward, instructors can tidy up the existing quizzes, or create new versions (still using the migrated questions, of course). It is easy to move questions into the Question Library and then assign them to functioning Question Pools once an instructor knows where to look.
Move questions into the Question Library
Go to the Quizzes tool in the navbar and choose a single imported quiz to rebuild. Instructors can edit any quiz with the dropdown arrow beside its name.
Return to the main Quizzes page and click the tab for Question Library.
Instructors could create new questions here with the New button. Instructors can also create whole quiz Sections here‒a Section in this case can be part of a quiz (with the option to shuffle question order) or simply what is used to organize items in the Question Library.
Click Import and then Browse Existing Questions. Yes, the instructor is “importing” their imported questions.
Find where the existing questions reside (the name of the quiz chosen from Sakai) in the Source drop-down.
Select the desired questions and then click Import. To keep things simple this time, select all questions from a single quiz and import them in one go. Instructors will want to complete this process for a single quiz at a time as there will be overlap with the automatically-numbered imported questions (in the future, instructors can select any specific parts needed).
Click the New button and create a Section. Use the automatically-numbered names to break things down into their sections (e.g. “Quiz 1, Section 1”).
Instructors now have a filing system on the left. In the main question area, select the “Quiz 1, Section 1” questions and then click Move (just above). Choose the destination section. Repeat for each section of the quiz.
Instructors could create new questions here with the New button. Instructor can also create whole quiz Sections here‒a Section in this case can be part of a quiz (with the option to shuffle question order) or simply what was used to organize items in their Question Library.
Create a new quiz using questions from the Question Library
Return to the main Quizzes page (or the Manage Quizzes tab).
While instructors can edit the quiz chosen for rebuilding, they will have to remove the questions that are already in it. This is because instructors can’t pull in questions from the Question Library if those questions are already part of the quiz. So, starting fresh is the best way to avoid this obstacle.
Click Create New and then Question Pool.
Browse Question Library will let instructors pick from all of the questions they’ve ever had (including everything that moved over from Sakai). In this case, select the Section that was set up previously (in Part 1 above), and select any or all questions within that.
Note that it is possible to have done this without backing everything up to the Question Library ‒ instructors will see the original imported quizzes listed as sources, although that could lead to future complications.
Give the Question Pool a name and decide on the Number of Questions to Select.
The section from the Question Library (or whatever questions chosen) has been added as a Question Pool and will appear below any other questions in the quiz. It is possible to drag-and-drop to change the order.
Reminder: While instructors can edit the quiz chosen for rebuilding, they will have to remove the questions that are already in it. This means that questions from the Question Library which are already part of the quiz can’t be pulled in, so starting fresh is the best way to avoid this obstacle.
Moving a Question Library between Brightspace Sites
In the course site to which an instructor wants to copy the quiz, find Course Admin in the navbar and then Import/Export/Copy Components.
Select Copy Components from another Org Unit.
Click Search for offering.
Locate and select the course containing the quiz meant for copying.
Click Add Selected and Select Components.
Select Question Library and Quizzes, then do one of the following:
To include all items, select Copy all items, then click Continue.
To include only some items, Select individual items to copy, then click Continue. On the Select Items to Copy page, select the items intended for copying. Click Continue.
Click Continue.
Click Finish.
A video step-by-step is available here: https://cpibrock.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/BLEDOCU/pages/883621919
A Video Demonstration
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