A question bank contains a vast collection of questions about a topic or a subject. It has varied uses and is popular among teachers and students. We’ll discuss the intent of a question bank and find ways to create it online.
Examinations are a part of our lives. Students need to attend the exams, and teachers have to create the exam papers and assess the answer sheets. Questions, answers, test papers, and assessments are an entire world in themselves. We have previously discussed MCQs and ways to create test papers. But what are question banks? How do you prepare them? Let’s find out…
What is a Question Bank in Education?
A question bank has questions in all formats and difficulty levels. Teachers can convert one format to another and use the same questions for multiple tests. For example, a multiple choice question can be re-written into a descriptive question, fill-up, or vice versa. Traditionally, question banks were prepared manually (a laborious task) and printed into booklets or books. We can still find such books in the market.
Teachers use question banks as reference guides when setting a test paper. It’s easy to use the existing questions or rephrase them to create a new test paper.
Students use question banks to study for the exams. They look at the important questions to identify the core topics of the subject and get a higher score on the exam.
The advent of technology has made it easier to create a question bank using software tools. Students and teachers access online question banks and download them on their devices. You can find free open-source question banks and paid versions online. But how do you create a question bank for a subject/ topic using online platforms? Is there a question bank template that can be followed?
Types of Question Banks
The importance of a question bank lies in the fact that it can have questions of many types. While it doesn’t necessarily follow a format or a template, it is good to organize the questions in an identifiable pattern. For example, you can list the same types of questions as a single set, irrespective of the topic. Or, you can segregate the questions based on topics. Even in this method, it is recommended to list the questions based on their types instead of randomly scattering them around. Additionally, the question bank can be subject-specific or include more than one subject with neat classification.
Suppose you want to create a question bank for biology. List the topics first and the types of questions to include (multiple-choice, true/ false, matching, fill-ups, descriptive, etc.). Then, use a question bank generator tool to create the questions. Combine the test papers and arrange them in an order. Viola! The Biology question bank is ready to use. With tools like PrepAI, you can enhance the question bank by including diagrams, tables, and graphs relevant to the topics.
What Are the Advantages of a Question Bank?
Organized Storage of Questions
Since a question bank is a collection of all important questions about the subject, it is a simple yet efficient way to organize vital topics in one place. Teachers don’t have to search for previous question papers. You can find them in the same question bank.
Easily Accessible
The main purpose of creating a question bank is to make the questions available for teachers and students. When you use a question generator tool like PrepAI to create a question bank, you can log in to your account to access it or download a copy on your device to use the question bank offline.
Saves Time and Effort
Teachers already have too much to do and not enough time. The same can be said for HRs and trainers in corporate organizations who work with multiple batches of trainees every day. Referring to a question bank to create other test papers saves time and energy. You can scramble the questions, rephrase them, and use many as you want.
Create Multiple Tests
This is one of the biggest advantages of a question bank. A question bank is extensive and contains several questions about the subject. You can refer to the same to create many tests and still ensure that the questions are not repeated. There’s no need to start from scratch every time. Moreover, you are less likely to miss an important question or a topic since it will be covered in the question bank.
Align Questions with Curriculum
Since tests are conducted to test the students’ knowledge based on a curriculum, the question bank makes it easy to align the tests with the syllabus and intent of the curriculum. Teachers will find it convenient to assess students for the given criteria. It also reduces the risk of students claiming that the questions are out of the syllabus.
Characteristics of a Question Bank
When preparing a question bank for any topic/ subject, you should keep the following aspects in mind. These factors will go a long way in enhancing how you make questions for exams, quizzes, or tests.
Language Clarity
The questions in the question bank should be in clear and understandable language. They should be free of errors, typos, misspellings, or grammatical mistakes. Don’t complicate the questions unless you need to. The phrasing should be straightforward and easy to understand.
Difficulty Levels
The question bank doesn’t have to contain only simple or tough questions. In fact, you should make it a point to create questions with various difficulty levels so that the question bank is versatile and easy to use. Fortunately, with PrepAI, you can create questions for three difficulty levels and include them in the question bank.
Different Formats
A similar rule applies to different question formats. For example, questions can be categorized into the following types-
- Multiple choice questions
- Fillups
- True or False
- Short answer questions
- Descriptive questions
- Matching
- Objective questions
- Subjective questions
- Formula or equation-based
- Image/ drawing/ graph-based, etc.
When creating a question bank, try to include all formats so that you can directly use some questions without rewriting them in another format. Moreover, it will be easier to rephrase them into other formats when you have more options to choose from. It is one of the best uses of a question bank.
No Bias
The intent of creating a question bank is to collect all possible questions about a subject in one place. There should be no bias when framing the questions. Social-political and religious inclinations should be avoided when creating a question bank. Don’t let personal assumptions and perspectives affect how you phrase the questions. This can be easily avoided by using AI question generator tools.
Number of Questions
There isn’t any limit to the number of questions you can have in a question bank. It is supposed to be large and contains all the important questions. Don’t aim to keep it brief. Instead, try to include as many questions as possible. When it comes to a question bank, the bigger, the better.
No Redundancy
While it may seem contradictory to the previous point, this is an important aspect to keep in mind. It is also necessary to not repeat the same question multiple times. Try to include something new or extra when using the same question in two or more formats. The question generator tools are helpful yet again because you can weed out repetitions and retain quality questions.
Syllabus Coverage
Ensure that the entire syllabus is covered in the question bank. That way, you can pick any topic from the subject and find questions related to it. This will improve the quality, versatility, and usage of the question bank. Furthermore, if the question bank is for students as well, it will make them read all topics from the syllabus instead of cherry-picking a handful and focusing only on those. This increases the chances of them gaining more knowledge, which is the purpose of education.
How to Create a Question Bank?
You can create a question bank in different ways. The easiest method is to use a AI powered question answer generator like PrepAI. It is simple, fast, and hassle-free.
Step 1: Create an Account
Start by creating your free account on the platform. This allows you to save a copy of the question bank in your account. The next time you want to make any changes to it, you can log in to your account, open the saved file and edit it. There’s no need to start from the first step.
Use the form on the website to sign up and create an account. Verify your account through the email verification link and access your PrepAI dashboard. This is a one-time step. You can also upgrade your account from free to paid subscriptions anytime you want.
Step 2: Create the Question Bank
Now that you can access your dashboard, you will see a screen to create a question bank. Give it a name (title) for easy reference and proceed to the next step. At this point, you also need to keep the content ready for the platform to create the question bank.
PrepAI uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to process the input information and create a question paper automatically. You don’t have to go through pages and pages of data to highlight questions. PrepAI will take care of it.
Step 3: Choose Input Method and Content
Input methods are important as every teacher might have a different way of recording notes. What if you want to upload a Word document? What if the content is in video format? PrepAI allows you to choose the input method to suit your requirements.
Topic Search: Enter the topic name in the search bar on the dashboard and choose the relevant category from the search results. Data will be gathered from reliable online sources like Wikipedia.
Copy/ Type Text: Do you have the text elsewhere? Copy it in the text bar or type it out (if it is in your memory).
PDF/ Word Doc: Upload an MS Word document or PDF file so if there is a lot of data to process. Since question banks deal with different topics from the same subject, this input method will be more suitable.
Video: Do you have recorded videos of the classes where the syllabus is taught? Is the content in a video format instead of text? You can add the URL link to the YouTube video or upload the video file. PrepAI will convert the video to text. You can provide a time frame (start and end time points) if you want to convert a certain portion of the video into a question paper.
Step 4: Generate Questions
Once you input the content, it’s time to generate the questions for the question bank. Select the types of questions you want and the difficulty levels. PrepAI provides the following question formats:
- Fillups
- True/ False
- Descriptive
- MCQs
The difficulty levels are categorized as easy, medium, and hard. Once you select the options, the questions will be generated and displayed on the same screen. You can also choose the number of questions you want in the test paper. Click on the generate questions button.
Additionally, you can opt for subject-based tests to create question papers for various topics in math, physics, chemistry, and aptitude. For these, you don’t have to provide input content except to select the relevant topic from the drop-down list.
Step 5: Edit the Question Bank
Now that the questions are ready, you can read them and make the necessary changes. PrepAI allows you to edit the questions, add new ones, and delete the existing ones. You can check if the answers are correct and report the wrong answers. This built-in feedback system will fine-tune the AI algorithm to become more accurate.
Step 6: Preview and Save the Question Bank
Once you finish editing the questions, you can preview them for a final check and save a copy to your account. Click on Finalize Questions button to save the question bank. You can ask another teacher to go through the question bank before finalizing it.
Step 7: Download/ Export the Question Bank
The last step is to download an offline copy of the question bank. This way, you can use it anytime without logging into your PrepAI account. The platform offers three download/ output formats- PDF, MS Word Docx, and MS Excel sheet.
You can download the question bank in all three formats if you like. Save a copy on your computer, mail it to your email id, share it with others, upload it to the cloud, etc. Use the question bank to create more test papers or train students for the exams.
If you want to conduct a test to assess the quality of the question bank, you can share the link with others. They can answer the questions and get instant results through the same interface. The participants don’t need to create an account.
Conclusion
A question bank in education is a versatile and flexible question paper that covers the entire syllabus of a subject. It is used by students and teachers for learning and assessment purposes. Creating a question bank online requires only a few minutes. It is simple and stress-free.
PrepAI is an efficient question generator developed for teachers, trainers, educators, tutors, parents, and institutions. It can help you create test papers and question banks quickly and reduce your workload. Talk to our team to learn more.
