What is a question bank?
Question banks are a way of storing both questions and scenarios for future use in a secure and organised system. Questions and scenarios are stored in different banks to improve the organisation of your content. Within these banks, you can easily find and manage questions/scenarios in preparation for upcoming assessments.
Why use a question bank?
Over time the amount of questions an organisation creates gradually builds up and you can find yourself with a lot of different questions in lots of different places, but with no effective way of managing them all. This means that when you’re trying to build an exam you have to go through the frustrating process of trying to remember where you put particular questions.
With a question bank, all your questions are stored and organised in a way that makes them easy to search and quick to access 24 hours a day for anyone that is creating an exam. A well organised question bank can also be utilised for blueprinting, which we discuss further below.
What’s the best way to organise your question bank?
With both your question and scenario banks we recommend storing your content by subject matter or module. This form of organisation, with sub-folders breaking down the subject matter further, ensures that the filing structure is scalable and means time can be spent on question improvements rather than reinventing the wheel for every exam. It also ensures anyone with minimal training can follow it.
The benefits of digital question banks
Collaboration amongst stakeholders
By granting specific and appropriate access to all those involved in authoring questions, your team can keep up to date with the status of individual questions and suggest improved versions prior to approval.
AI-powered blueprinting
By developing a well-curated and organised question bank you can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the blueprinting process. Blueprinting utilises AI technology to enable exams to be created in a fraction of the time typically taken.
It uses the parameters you have set, for instance how many questions you would like from a variety of question banked folders, to develop a robust assessment optimising the breadth of knowledge tested. Without a well-structured and organised question bank it is trickier to get the desired results from blueprinting.
Read more about blueprinting here.
Better analysis of questions
Question banks enable an in-depth analysis of questions, such as when a question was last used or its difficulty level. This means that you can quickly find the most effective questions to use in your exams. It also means that your students are getting the best possible exam in terms of testing their knowledge and skills accurately.
For example, with assessment software like Maxexam, you are provided with a quick snapshot of the performance of all questions contained in a bank. This performance history can include how many times a question has been used, its difficulty level and its discrimination. With all this information readily available, you are able select the best questions that adequately test students and lead to the consistent improvement of your exams. Additionally, the software can highlight poorly performing questions which may require review.
Curriculum coverage
Question bank reports can be generated to understand curriculum coverage and identify underrepresented topics within a bank, providing guidance on where to focus exam content creation.
By ensuring questions are mapped to one or more learning outcomes, you are also able to ensure exams created are testing candidates’ knowledge thoroughly. This mapping also means that post exam analysis can easily identify where candidates may not be reaching the required standard.
What to look for in an exam management system
Questions take a lot of time to create which makes them extremely valuable and with large question banks this value is heightened. So, it is essential that the exam management system you choose should have robust security.
When exploring assessment software, it’s best to look for a system that is encrypted and allows you to give specific users access permissions to your question bank. This will make managing access to your question bank a lot simpler and it will be easier to hold people to account.
All exam management systems are slightly different, so when you are looking at a new system it is vital to understand how it will meet your specific requirements and the way you work within your organisation. Look for a company who gives you an honest assessment of how they can meet your needs or how you might need to change the way you operate to get the most from the system.
Conclusions
Successful use of a question bank is not just about how your questions are stored, but how your exam management system can inform your question creation processes, ensuring resources are allocated appropriately whilst also ensuring that questions do not become over exposed. A sophisticated question bank system provides you the tools to work efficiently and effectively to continuously improve your questions.
If you would like some advice on question banks or if you would like to learn more about Maxexam’s secure question banking system, then send us an email: info@maxinity.co.uk or fill in our contact form.
To find out how Kings College London have benefitted from using a digital question bank, take a look at our case study here.