Each course has its own Question Library: a central storage space to save, sort and archive questions. This enables you to easily access and re-use them in quizzes and surveys.

You can get to the Question Library via Quizzes or Surveys: 

1. Go to Activities in the navbar of your course.
2. Click Quizzes or Surveys.
3. Next, click Question Library (second tab).

You have access to the following options after creating your question library: 

1. The folder structure of your question library is displayed on the left side of the screen. The folders you see are the sections you have created.
2. Click New to create a new section/question. Click Import to add questions you have created in an activity at some point or that were saved on your desktop. 
3. Use the navbar to perform the following actions with the selected questions/sections:
   • Move a question/questions to a different section or move a section/sections to a different section (Move).
   • Delete the selected questions/sections (Delete).
   • Change the order of your questions/sections in your question library (Order).
   • Easily change the max. amount of the points a student can achieve, the level of difficulty and/or whether the question is obligatory or not (Edit Values).
4. The icons preceding the title indicate a section (folder icon) or a question (question mark icon). 
5. Click the fold-out arrow behind a question to open the quick-menu: 
   • Click Edit to edit the question. 
   • Click Preview to view the question as a student, as an assessor, see if there is feedback and/or a hint attached to it and where the question is situated. 
   • Click Attempts to see how many times the question has been filled out and with which results. 

With the help of Sections you can organise your questions in folders. The use of sections has a number of advantages:

• You can create an orderly question library by moving multiple questions to separate folders (sections).
• You can import a complete section directly into a quiz or survey.
  (Note: all features attached to the sections will be imported as well: the section title, question(s) and added information and/or images and/or feedback.) 
• You can create sub-sections within a section.
  (for example: the section Quizzes can consist of two sub-sections: Semester 1 and Semester 2)
• You can use sections as an introductory text/extra information. This can be information that does not have any questions attached to it, or a case you want to use that does already contain multiple questions, for example:  
  • if you made a quiz that has two parts and you would like to inform the students about that at the start of the quiz
    (part 1 will test your knowledge of the subject and consists of 10 multiple choice questions, part 2 will test insight and consists of 5 open questions);
  • if you want to provide additional information that only applies to a specific part of the quiz and therefore should only be shown as soon as the students have arrived at that point of the quiz
    (this second part consists of 5 open questions, make sure to include elements x,y,z in your answers and that they are no longer than x words).

You can import existing question in the question library. This applies to questions:

• you have created yourself in Quizzes of Surveys;
• saved on your computer (only csv- or zip files).

In Brightspace you can create eleven different questions types. With each question type, the process and steps are different. It is for this reason that we are not including question-specific instructions in this manual. However, we do touch upon the different question types and their additional options below. In case there is something you would like more information on, you can contact your faculty's ICT-support staff (https://www.ru.nl/lecturers/contact/) or send an e-mail to [email protected] or [email protected]. 

Navigate to the question library and click New. Choose the question type you would like to create: 

• True or False (T/F): question that can either be true or false.  For example: a different word for peanut is earth nut. 
• Multiple Choice (MC): question with multiple options, one of which is correct. For example: Which one is not a nut (a) candle nut (b) tiger nut (c) hazelnut.
• Multi-Select (M-S): question with multiple options, of which multiple can be correct. For example: Select the legumes: (a) peanut (b) soybean (c) tiger nut (d) tamarind. For this question type there are multiple ways in which the student can receive points for a question. You will have the choice between:
  • All or Nothing: Student will only receive points when all right answers have been selected; 
  • Correct Selections: Points are distributed across all answers, student will receive a part of the points for each rightly selected answer/for each correct blank answer. 
  • Correct Answers, Limited Selections: Points are distributed across the correct answers, student will receive a part of the points for each correctly selected answer; 
  • Right Minus Wrong Selections: Points are distributed across all answers, student can lose points for each answer that has been wrongfully selected. The score can never be below zero.
• Written Response (WR): open question of which the answer can be as long as you specify. You can make use of initial text to write the beginning of the answer. For example: Why are green legumes such as green beans classified as vegetables? - I think that ...
• Short Answer (SA): question where the answer consists of one word or a short sentence. For example: An almond actually is not a nut but a ...
• Multi Short Answer (MSA): question where the answer consists of multiple words or a short sentence. For example: Name the three most fatty nuts (per 100g):...
• Fill in the Blanks (FIB): question where the participant has to fill in the blanks of a text. For example: Nuts contain a lot of ... fats, and eating unsalted nuts lowers the ...-cholesterol. 
• Matching Questions (MAT): question where the participant has to connect answers to other items. For example: match the correct pairs to each other: walnut, tiger nut, peanut X nut, turnip, legume. 
• Ordering Question (ORD): question where the participant has to put the answers in the right order. For example: Which nuts contain the least carbohydrates per 100gr? (from < to >): brazil nuts, cashews, pecans, chestnuts
  
• For Surveys only: 
  • Likert questions (LIK): question that the participant answers based on a scale. For example: I eat nuts: very often, often, occasionally, almost never, never.
• Mathematical questions:
  • Arithmetic (2+2): question that tests mathematical knowledge and/or understanding.
  • Significant Figures (x10): question where the participant has to answer in a certain scientific notation and where the answer consists of a specific number or figure. 

A few useful tips that apply to multiple question types: 

1. Feedback: you can provide questions with feedback in two different ways.
   You can give Overall Feedback at the question itself (for example: tiger nut does not refer to the appetizer by Duyvis) and/or Answer Feedback at correct and/or wrong answers (for example: Correct! Peanuts are in fact called earth nuts, as the pod grows under ground). In both cases,  students can read the feedback via Submission views.
   Note: if you mention the correct answer in the feedback, make sure that the students only have ONE quiz attempt, otherwise the second attempt it will be very easy to give the correct answer!
   • The following question types have a feedback option: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multi-Select, Written Response, Short Answer, Multi Short Answer and Fill in the Blanks. To add feedback, click Expand question feedback at the bottom of the page of the selected question type, and fill out your feedback in the text box.
2. Hints: in some cases it can be useful to provide questions with a hint.
   For instance with practice tests (for example: making a visual display of the connection between the variables can be helpful) or when you want to point the students to a certain source that could be of help to them (for example: use the articles of module one in your answer of this question).
   • Hints can be added to all question types. To add hints, click Expand question hint  at the bottom of the page of the selected question type and fill out the hint in the text box. 
   • Hints are created for each single question, but when creating or editing a quiz you can choose if you want to show or hide all hints created:
     • Click New Quiz/Edit.
     • Click Expand optional advanced properties.
     • Enable Allow hints. You can find this option under the header Display.
3. Weighting: you can choose to allow multiple correct answers for a certain question, but to weigh each of them differently. For example: Answer A is worth 100% of the total amount of points that can be achieved (2 points), answer B 50% (1 point) and answer C 0% (0 points).
   • The following question types have a weighting option: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multi-Select and Fill in the Blanks. When creating a question you we see the column Weight (%) behind each answer option. Fill in what percentage of the total point to be achieved each answer is worth.
4. Enable inserted images and attachments: students can upload a file when they answer a question if you enable this feature. This file can be 100MB, except when it concerns a video note (1GB).
   • Adding files can only be done for the  Written Response question type. Make sure you have selected the option Enable inserted images and attachments when making the questions. Or for the Arithmetic and Significant Figures question types by selecting Allow Attachtments to support answers.