What is a Question Pool and how do I Create One?

Question pools is an assessment feature that allows you to set up an assessment that will  pull questions from different groups of related questions to generate different assessments for each student.

You can set up question pools to pool questions by:

• Groups (questions grouped together that cover the same content)
• Learning objectives/standards
• Question type (multiple choice, fill in the blank, ordering, etc.)

Example of a question pool: When creating an assessment you may add 50 questions. These 50 questions could be 10 groups of 5 questions. Each group of questions covers its own specific topic. Using the settings within this assessment you can have it generate a pool of questions with a chosen number of questions pulled from each group.

Using the question pool feature, each student could have a different assessment that covers the same topics.

To begin creating a question pool that pulls questions from groups within an assessment, enter a course through the editor tool.

Click the +Add Activity.

Select the assessment activity type.

Give the assessment a title.

Within the settings tab, configure the gradebook settings.

Scroll down to assessment pool settings.

1. Enter the desired number of questions you want the assessment to have.

2. Select pool by question groups.

3. Select add group.

1. Give the group an ID

2. Choose minimum number of questions to be pulled from this group.

3. Select done.

Continue adding as many question groups as needed for this assessment.

1. Navigate to the questions tab.

2. Select create a new question.

Add and fill in the desired question type and adjust the question settings.

Under metadata enter the group ID you would like this question to belong to (set up in previous step).

Continue creating questions and assigning them to groups using their group ID until you have the desired number of questions in each group.

Once complete, click save.

Below is an image showing what the assessment created above looks like from a student's perspective.

This is a question pool that has 10 total questions, with 2 questions pulled from each of the 5 groups.

To begin creating a question pool that pulls questions from specific learning objectives/standards within an assessment, enter a course through the Editor tool.

Note: before you can do the following step, be sure that learning objectives/standards have been imported or added into the course. Click here to learn how.

Click the +Add Activity.

Select the Assessment activity type.

Give the assessment a title.

Within the settings tab, configure the gradebook settings.

Scroll down to assessment pool settings.

1. Enter the desired number of questions you want the assessment to have.

2. Select pool by learning objectives.

3. Enter the minimum questions per learning objective.

1. Navigate to the questions tab.

2. Select create a new question.

Add and fill in the desired question type and adjust the question settings.

Under objective mastery select choose objective.

1. From the list of learning objectives, select the objective to align this question with.

2. Click Done.

Continue creating questions and aligning them to learning objectives until you have the desired number of questions aligned to each objective this assessment is covering.

Once complete, click Save

To begin creating a question pool that pulls questions from groups within an assessment, enter a course through the editor tool.

Click the +Add Activity.

Select the assessment activity type.

Give the assessment a title.

Within the settings tab, configure the gradebook settings.

Scroll down to assessment pool settings.

1. Enter the desired number of questions you want the assessment to have.

2. Select pool by question type.

3. Enter the minimum questions per question type.

1. Navigate to the questions tab.

2. Select create a new question.

Add questions using different question types.

Once complete, click save in the upper right hand corner.

Below is an image showing what the assessment created above looks like from a student's perspective.

This is a question pool that has 12 total questions, with a minimum of 2 questions for each question type.

Echo is constantly being improved based on the feedback from users and we strive to keep our documentation up to date.  If this document doesn’t match what you are seeing in Echo, please let us know.