Question Banks in Canvas

What is a Question Bank?

Quizzes can be created independently by adding your desired questions directly to a quiz you are creating from scratch, but if you would like to create a repository of assessment questions that can be re-used or mixed and matched for quizzes and exams in your courses, you may want to consider creating question banks in which to store a series of assessment questions that can be easily pulled into any exam you create.

How to create a Question Bank

If you have admin access it is recommended that you create your question banks at the account level (Found under Admin > Account Question Banks). If you do not have admin access, you will create your question banks at the course level. Within a course for which you would like to use a question bank, go to the Quizzes tab and select the ellipses to the right of the "+ Quiz" button to get to the "Manage Question Banks" prompt.

Manage Question Banks
  1. In the course question bank builder, you must select "+ Question Bank" from the top-right corner.Add Question Bank button
  2. Name your Question Bank
  3. Select the bank to start adding questions
  4. Select “+ Add a Question”Add a Question button
  5. Build out your questions as you would in a traditional quiz. Make sure you hit “Update Question” to save your work.New Bank - Update Question

Using Question Banks

Once you have created a question bank you would like to use in an exam or quiz, you must start by creating your quiz from the Quizzes tab.

  1. Select "+ Quiz" from the top-right corner. Name your quiz and update your quiz settings. Then, go to the Questions tab to add a question bank to the quiz.
  2. Select "Find Questions" to search for your question bank or to select specific questions from a question bank.Questions Tab - Find Questions
  3. You will see question banks from all of your courses. You can select all to choose the entire bank or select individual questions. Hit “Add questions” to add them to the quiz. You can repeat this process to add questions from more than one bank to your quiz.Add questions
  4. Save your quiz

Questions about Question Banks

If I pull questions from a question bank from a different course for my quiz, will that question bank be copied into the course I am creating the quiz for?

  • No. When you select questions from a bank while building your quiz, you are actually just making a copy of those questions to be used in your quiz. They are no longer linked to the original question bank, and thus they do not need that question bank to be in your course in order to be used.

If I edit the questions in a question bank, will all of the quizzes that I have created in my courses using that bank also be updated?

  • No. Quizzes using a question bank are basically a copy of the bank, which is not tied to the bank after they are created. If you want to edit questions in a bank and have the same edits reflected in a quiz that was created using those questions, you must delete the old questions from the quiz and re-link it to the newly edited question bank.

If I want to revise a question bank I've already created for a different course, what's the best way to do that?

  • You may want to import your question bank into the new course and then edit that bank for that course's needs. Then just link to that bank when you are creating your quiz in the new course. Now you have two versions and you can access both banks when needed.

Canvas Guides

For additional guides provided by Canvas, please visit the Canvas Community links provided below.

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