Quizzes… we all use them. They are an integral part of any good eLearning course. Yet one of the oft-neglected types of quizzes is one that draws from a bank of questions.
What is a question bank?
A question bank is a group of questions from which a certain number of questions are drawn in order to populate the quiz. For instance, there could be 20 questions in a question bank, but the quiz would only use 5 of them. The questions are drawn randomly, thus giving the learner a different quiz each time.
Why would you want to use a question bank?
Question banks are extremely useful when you want your learners to be able to retake the quiz but not be presented with the same questions each time, thereby making the quiz more about knowledge assessment. Often times we shuffle the answers in our multiple choice questions, thinking that’s good enough to keep memorization out of the equation. But if we are providing feedback to our users on correct and incorrect answers, then memorization still plays into the assessment. However, when a question bank is used, the learner is forced to rely on their own knowledge to get the answer.
Creating a question bank in Storyline 2
Articulate Storyline 2 has made it extremely easy to create, modify, and utilize a question bank in your eLearning courses.
Let’s take a look at how to do that.
To begin, from Story Mode, with the Home tab selected, click on Question Banks>Create Question Bank.
From the New Question Bank dialog that appears, give your question bank a name.
A new tab (with the name you gave your question bank) appears and you are given the opportunity to add questions.
You can select to create a new graded or survey question, or you can import questions that were previously created in another question bank or in the course itself.
Any type of question that you’d use in a quiz can be used in a question bank, and you can configure them just as you would normally.
Setting up the Question Draw in your course
Once you have your questions created, you need to return to the course in Story View and then click New Slide. Then, select Draw From Bank from the links across the top.
From this screen you can choose to draw questions randomly, how many questions to include in the draw, which questions to include in the shuffle, and you can lock questions so that they’ll appear in the same position in the quiz (maybe you always want to start the quiz with the same question, so you lock it into position).
Once you have your draw configured, and return to Story View, you see a slide that looks like this:
Clicking the top half of the slide lets you configure the slide draw, clicking the bottom half lets you view and configure the question bank.
One of the nicest things about using a question bank is how easy it is to add, delete and update questions and to change the draw. Also, in terms of visual cleanliness, the question bank takes up one slide in your story view rather than multiple slides. That makes for a cleaner interface.
Using question banks is a powerful way to assess your learners’ knowledge retention accurately. It stymies memorization and encourages them to draw on the knowledge they’ve acquired through the course of the eLearning.
As you browse our library of Storyline templates, see if you can recognize the ones that were built using question banks. Downloading and practicing with those will help you get a better grasp on the concept.
Happy banking!!
The post Bank on It: Using Question Banks in Storyline 2 appeared first on eLearning Brothers.