[New Quizzes] Item banks created within a course should be automatically added to the course

[nuscitpkg]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

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Preface: Canvas support asked me to post a feature request as this is was deemed not a bug, but how it should work. This is in spite of what is stated in How do I create an Item Bank in New Quizzes? (For reference Case #08869242.)

When creating an item bank in a new quiz, the documentation shows that after the item bank is created, it should appear under the This Course filter.

The actual situation, confirmed by Canvas Support, is that a user has to share the newly created item bank back to the course.

This is counterintuitive as well as adding steps to what should be a straightforward process.

I hope that the behaviour described in the guide can be implemented.

[IDJane]

Follow-up to my previous comment above.  I talked to Instructure and learned that our main Canvas admin here at the University just needs to toggle on a setting: "the item banks permission should be added to the teacher role." The default is toggled off.  So that was easy.

I tested this solution out and it seemed to work.  Just be sure the instructors are editing a copy of the original set of items for the new course.

[milesl]

@IDJane In June, Canvas support told me that the "item banks - manage account" permission "gives someone access to all item banks in the account it is given for regardless of what courses they are in. So this might make things a little more tedious as there may be more questions banks you would need to look at in order to find and share the correct ones, but the process for sharing banks is still the same."

So my understanding is that it does not solve the problem raised here. Please let me know if you're seeing otherwise.

[DarrylEvans]

I just spent time trying to figure this out myself before finding this post. How this could be considered normal operation for this function and not a bug escapes me.

[A00364575]

The faculty we work with who have dealt with New Quiz Item Banks come away telling us that New Quizzes will be a train wreck. They get thoroughly confused by the item banks not being in their course already, and sorting out which banks go to their course is a challenge. Sharing a lot of banks is an hours-long manual process in which mistakes are easy to make. Sharing item banks to the course automatically and making bulk sharing possible will go a long ways toward making New Quizzes more palatable.

[leward]

I am speechless.  To suggest that this be added to Idea Conversations implies that the current behavior is the intended behavior, which doesn't make sense because it is completely counter intuitive.   It also means that other teachers in the same course will not be able to access banks used in quizzes unless they have been explicitly shared with them or the course.  I have confirmed that this is the case.

On a related point, the UI doesn't make it at all obvious that banks can be shared with courses.  The sharing prompt says "Enter name or login id" which suggests that the only valid entity types are people, not courses.  It shouldn't be necessary to dig into a Canvas guide in order to figure this out.

I can imagine situations where the bank creator doesn't want to share with the course, but that could be accommodated in the design.  For example, when creating a new bank, there could be a "share with the current course" checkbox which is checked by default.  If the creator unchecks the box, they could be warned that other teachers, TAs, etc in the course will not be able to  view or edit the bank.

[AlexRayCUI]

I'm going to pile on to this thread in the hopes more squeaking will get this wheel some attention. I'm an ID working on migrating a couple dozen courses (all scattered across the build, review, and revision phases) and the fact Item Banks can't be "owned" by the course they're created in is proving very problematic. I agree with @A00364575 that, barring some sort of mass misunderstanding by users, this appears to be a train wreck in the making and, as @leward expressed, I am speechless at this appearing to be the intended design.  

[canvas_admin]

It seems to me that Instructure has gotten this all wrong. They made the user foundational for item banks then the user can share to a course. They have made it hierarchical rather than symbiotic where the user and course share the item bank together.  This is typically the way it works in the real world. A teacher creates an exam w/item banks for a particular course (thus belonging to the course once given to students), but because the teacher has created, he or she can then replicate it for other courses or future iterations of the same course.

[KristinL]

This idea has been developed and is On Canvas Beta

For more information, please read through the Canvas Release Notes (2023-04-15).