New Quizzes: Allow item banks to be tied to a course rather than an instructor

[dgrilley]

I teach 7 different courses on a rotating basis, each with different content and different ideas.  Right now, the questions that I use are tied to each course in the Quizzes question bank.  Additionally, I collaborate on many of the courses such that I am not the only one editing quiz questions.  Thus, having the item banks for these courses tied specifically to me does not make sense.  While other ideas are promoting the idea of granting editing permissions (https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12034-allow-admins-to-grant-multiple-users-permissions-for-ite...), this idea is specifically to promote giving the option to tie item banks to specific courses.  One of the other main benefits that I see is to provide additional organization to the hundreds of potential item banks that I will have if item banks are not tied to specific courses.

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2021-06-19).

[Stef_retired]

 @dgrilley ‌, the idea to which you linked in the description, https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/12034-allow-admins-to-grant-multiple-users-permissions-for-ite... , seems to be aimed at a similar goal to what you've set forth. To be clear, your idea seeks to expand upon that idea by associating item banks with courses rather than or in addition to users?

this idea is specifically to promote giving the option to tie item banks to specific courses. 

Thanks.

[dgrilley]

Correct.  I see a need for both based how we typically function.  Perhaps, though, my idea is too pedantic as there may be other ways to accomplish the same goal besides tying item banks to instructors.  In the end, I team teach courses where the concept of an instructor owning an item bank is contrary to what we are trying to achieve as a learning community.  Additionally, because of the number of courses I teach, having the item banks from 6 other courses polluting whatever course I happen to be working on will make working with item banks incredibly frustrating.  I would like to suggest that we avoid "tagging" item banks as a solution.  Yes it would make searching easier; however, using tags as the only solution will just add another step every time someone goes to work on their quizzes.

Dan

[Stef_retired]

Understood,  @dgrilley ‌, and thanks for the clarification. We've opened the idea for voting.

[timothy_maw]

This is something we completely need! We are competency based so our courses can last a really long time as students come and go. There are multiple instructors in a course and an instructor may leave the college but we are still using the same course with the same question banks. Having item banks attached to instructors is really worrisome as it makes it really hard to access what we need.

[venitk]

This would be necessary for us to use item banks in new quizzes. In our program, we have the IDs build quizzes, and then have multiple instructors across campuses teach the courses, so it wouldn't be feasible for us to share it by person. And then if the ID who created the quiz leaves the program before sharing the item bank with another ID, we would be in trouble. 

[GideonWilliams]

Why not have the flexibility of both - course and users.

Whilst I prefer we had one courses with multiple instructors and flexibility of approach (flexible content, modules, assignments etc), Canvas does not seem to want to develop this approach and has stopped at assignments.

Restricting Item Banks to a courses is fine provided you also allow greater personalisation of the course material.

[dgrilley]

 @GideonWilliams ‌

I completely agree that it should be an option, and not either course or instructor.  Perhaps the title is too dogmatic in that regard.  Please see the description below the title.

Dan

[langlangcat]

I found this out when I was migrating multiple courses' testing banks into the New Quiz item bank. What more can you expect? After the cumbersome export and import, you found ALL your testing banks squeezed under your user account. and you suddenly realized how bad this can lead to.  

Picture a faculty, who has been teaching with Canvas for 10 years and had designed around some 20 courses, each course has 15 testing banks, now he must fumble through all his 300 plus testing banks to locate the right one.... Even worse case for us, the instructional designers, then multiply that number by 100..... and there is NOT A SINGLE WAY even to sort out a course! 

Even if you have a good naming convention to tell these piled-up item banks (silly name too) apart, you need to turn hundreds of pages to locate one. It is not for the fainted heart.  

To Canvas Tech Team:

Please, if you must roll out this bug-ridden New Quiz, could you at least make it Couse Based instead? and how difficult for you guys to some downward compatibility integration of QTI 1.1? Respondus does not use 1.2 or 2.1. we have to take a detour to Legacy and import them to New Quiz.

[sharris]

While having question banks tied to specific users is great for K12, it's horrible for HiEd. It's really a non-starter for us in moving forward with Quizzes.Next. There is no way we can implement the tool if banks aren't tied to courses. I've outlined, in detail, my reasoning in a community post (below). 

https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/50567-quizzesnext-question-banks 

[sharris]

I'm really concerned about timing. By the time Canvas addresses this issue, how close will we be to the old tool be deprecated ? We are going to need at least 6 months to transition everything.