Future question bank/sharing/versioning requirements

In my overview roadmap of things that needed to be improved in related to Moodle's question code, one item was that we needed to improve the sharing model in Moodle's question bank, and introduce question versioning.

These are significant changes that will need to be carefully thought out. We have to make possible all the different types of sharing that people want, without making the question bank any more complicated. In fact, there is ample evidence in the quiz forum that the sharing in the question bank in Moodle 1.9 is already too complicated for most people to understand fully.

But, before we can design a solution, we need to make sure we know what the problem is.

• Please list any related requirements you have on this page.
• Please try to express your requirements from the user's point of view, not a developer's point of view.
• Describe thing that the are currently possible, that we must keep,
• and also things that are not currently possible, but which should be.

Question organisation requirements

Questions in hierarchical cateogies

(existing feature).

Question tagging

(existing feature, since 2.0).

Thread of comments for each question

Helps teachers collaborate about the question. In some activities, perhaps students could be allowed to comment too.

(What about ratings?)

Clear which question a particular quiz uses

(Otherwise, as a present, backup and restore is a nightmare.) Would also apply to any other activity that used questions (e.g. Lesson, Self-test.)

Shared question banks

Possibly enough just to have question banks at course level. The admin can always make a separate "Physics questions" course, and enrol the people who should have access as teachers there.

Question bank for each user

Where they can build up a private collection of questions.

Question versioning

Gives undo. Also makes sharing safer. The kind of model I am thinking of is similar to a wikipedia page (or Moodle Docs page!)

Except that once a question is shared in different places, this can lead to branching, and a desire to merge. So, I am also looking enviously at some of the git features, but I don't want to over-complicate things.

License information attached to each question

Like when you upload a file. Helps with sharing.

Import/export scriptable by web services

This would let a remote question editing tool

1. retrieve a question directly from Moodle's question,
2. present it to the user to be edited, and then
3. when the user saves, the edited question is written directly back into the Moodle question bank.

Import/export to update existing questions, not just add new ones

This enables the following workflow:

1. Export all the questions in a category to Moodle XML.
2. Load in your text editor, and to a search-and-replace to fix some problem that affects a lot of the questions.
3. Re-import to replace the existing questions.

Integration with community hubs

A way to push and pull question banks to and from community hubs.

Question-bank interface requirements

Customisable views?

Users can choose which columns they want to see.

Easy organisation

• Ways to reorganise the categories, move questions between them, etc.
• Ways to tag questions easily.

See also

• Goals_of_an_online_assessment_system