Exporting/Importing Item banks

[alexandra_janos]

There does not appear to be a way to export and import content into item banks through the GUI or an API.  Is there an API (or one coming soon) for Item Bank import/export?  We also reviewed the full Course Export in IMSCC format and could not find the item banks.  Are item banks supposed to be in the export?

Since question banks are supported for 2 more years and item bank is not as full featured yet, is it a reasonable approach to use question banks for now?  Will there be a more convenient migration process coming (if so approximately when) where we can convert our courses with question banks to item banks?

Thank you!

Alex.

[greydon · Accepted solution]

Hello @alexandra_janos 

Thank you for contacting the Canvas Community. We're sorry to hear you've been experiencing issues with exporting/importing item banks. Thanks for explaining the problem and we understand that it is a bit of a process to get question banks to item banks (currently) and will be working on improving that for the future. For now, there are some options you have but yes - you  can continue  using question banks without issues. Ideally, the process to transfer question banks to item banks  will be as intuitive and  easy as the "migrate" option we have now to move classic to new quizzes. You are welcome to continue using question banks  for now.

To convert question banks to  item banks you have some options as has been discussed in this post here:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Instructional-Designer/Transfer-from-old-Question-Banks-to...

You can migrate the classic to new, and then move those to an item bank. You can export the classic quiz as QTI file and then import as a new quiz (probably best method) and create the item bank when you do so. There's some good directions in that post, feel free to check it out. 

[floresr]

Is there a way to do the opposite? the issue I have run into is that when using new quizzes one cannot export those to another Canvas instance at another school. I thought a workaround might be to convert the item banks into question banks and then export a copy of the question bank, but I don't see how. Any suggestions for how instructors can copy their new quizzes (or the item banks) from one school's Canvas instance to another?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hello there, @alexandra_janos ...

In addition to the information you got from @greydon, I wanted to share this link:

Solved: Re: Migrate question banks from the old quizzing e... - Instructure Community (canvaslms.com...

I'm not sure if this will completely help to answer your question, but the above link includes a long set of directions for moving question banks to items banks.  It's probably not the most ideal way to do this, but I had tried this recently in my own sandbox course, and it worked.  So, for now, it might be a good work-around solution for you.

Anyway... my $0.02 for what it's worth.

[CraigJ]

How do I export and import an Item Bank (New Quiz format)? I tried exporting All Quizzes, under Settings, Export Course Content, but didn't really contain anything in the zip file. I guess it was old Quizzes not New Quizzes..?