Exam Question Management (Beta)
IMPORTANT: This information is for people who are looking at the work completed up to March 2021 on Elentra's new question management tools. To access this work you should have received a link from the developer at your school or from the Elentra Core Team.
These instructions are not for exam question management in any live production environment.
ℹ️ Important Notes on Changes to Question Management
Labels (formally known as Folders)
Labels replace the folders that previously stored questions.
Question folders that already existed in an installation of Elentra will be migrated to become a Label. (You can also create new Labels as needed.)
Permissions that were on an existing folder will be applied to the corresponding Label created during migration.
More than one label can be applied to a question. That means that if you want to associate a question with more than one specialty, more than one body system, or more than one topic, labels lets you do that.
Associating a question with a course.
You can avoid creating Labels for courses by instead just associating a question with a course.
If a question is assigned to a course, by default, course contacts for that course (e.g. Course Director, Curriculum Coordinator, Program Coordinator, Associated Faculty) will have access to all questions associated with the course.
You can associate a question to one or more courses and/or one or more labels.
Question Assessment Types (Summative and Formative)
These categories will be applied in future when exams you create must be flagged as Summative or Formative. You'll only be able to apply Formative questions to Formative Exams, and Summative questions to Summative Exams.
All migrated questions from existing Elentra installations will become Summative.
Question Status (Draft, Published, etc)
Users can designate a status (this allows for the creation of Draft questions which can later be reviewed and published).
System statuses like Draft/Publish can only be changed by the appropriate action, not on the Status tab. Selecting either Draft/Publish will always create a new version.
Multilingual schools can utilize statuses like "Translation Requested", "Translation Approved", etc.
Users can use a "Review Status" such as "Requested", "Approved", etc.
Enhancements to Multiple Choice, Multiple Response
Enhances functionality of multiple choice multiple responses questions to support weighting different response options.
Ability to Copy an Existing Question
Users can now create a duplicate copy of an existing question
Enhancements to Deleting a Question
Users can now retire a question, allowing for better management of long-term question banks.
Default Permissions
The new Question Management feature handles permissions via two methods: course association and label association.
Course Associations Any course contact will be able to access questions that are associated with that course.
Note that Course Contact access to questions is controlled through the access control list (a database table in Elentra) so that it can be configured for an institution's need. For example, you could adjust things so that Associated Faculty have the ability to save drafts of questions/groups, but not publish them.
Label Associations Labels are built in Elentra and you can associate individuals with one or more labels. For each association you make, you can control whether the user can read or write questions, groups and exams (in this case groups refers to question groups).
Labels Management
Question Index
When you click on the Questions tab you will now land on the Question Index page. From this page you can search for questions by typing in a word, and you can apply multiple filters to refine your search.
When viewing results, card view will show you the question text and responses along with an option to see more information at the bottom of each card.
List view will let you see more questions in a smaller field and get a quick overview of their status, associated groups, assigned curriculum tags, application to exams, and more.
Search and Filter
The search and filter options have been expanded to improve functionality and user experience.
Search query can target any visible field. Therefore, if you are showing additional columns via the "Columns" button, search queries will include those additional columns allowing for more granular ability to see only what you want to see.
Filter options greatly expanded and now include Label, Date, Type, Author, Exam Usage (allows you to pick a specific exam and see the questions used), Course, Group, Retired, Status, Curriculum Tags, Assessment Type. Filters allow for more than one selection at a time allowing more granular ability to scope the returned question items to be exactly what you need.
Each time you pick a category from Filter By (e.g. Question Types) you'll then be able to select your specific filters (e.g. Multiple Choice). One exception to this is the Retired option (it will just show you retired questions or all questions).
Currently applied filters are displayed as badges, and can be cleared by selecting the x beside the individual badge, or via the Clear All Filters button.
Enhanced Navigation Experience
The following enhancements have been made to both the table and card view of the index:
Paginated screens have controls to display how many can be displayed, and the ability to jump to first and last pages
Table View
In Table View you can control which columns to show for your filtered questions via the "Columns" button.
Default Columns
Additional Columns
ID
Author
Type
Date
Text
Languages
Status
Exam Type
Groups
Description
Tags
Code
Exams
Card View
The Card View will allow you a preview of the question as it might appear to learners, the ability to view more information about specific questions and the ability to show or hide the correct answer.
Status
Question Status is a new field. You can now create questions in draft mode and request that they be reviewed. This allows for careful oversight of all questions before they are published.
Currently you do not set a specific reviewer per question. Instead you can filter by status to find questions that require attention.
Additional icons will show a question's Review status:
You can Ability to set status on multiple questions by checking the question you'd like to edit and selecting: "Set Status".
Data Visibility
The Question Index user interface has been improved to include more data in a more visible state. This includes:
Associated Groups
See groups this question belongs to and click edit to quickly go edit a group
Associated Exams
You'll see the total question count, a count of any existing posts, and take the exam in a preview mode; each of these will link you to another tab.
Associated Exam Types
Associated Curriculum Tags
Click on the count for each entity to see more detail about a question.
Batch (aka Bulk) Index actions
When viewing the question index you can make changes to multiple questions at once to enhance productivity when using the Question Index. These actions include:
Group questions
Set status
Set course
Set curriculum tags
This process will open the curriculum tag selector and show you the tags already assigned, which question is assign with which tag.
Tags added will be applied to every question selected via checkbox
You are able to un-assign tags via this method as well
Reactivate retired questions
Add Question
When you build a question through the user interface, you will now walk through several tabs to add the required information.
The Setup tab contains mostly new additions to the adding process. It includes the configuring if a question is flagged as Summative or Formative. It also includes the ability to associate a question with a course or a label.
For organizations using the migration, all existing questions will be set to summative.
This tab also contains the version history of a question, for new questions this will be blank.
Copying a Question
From the Setup or Details tab of an existing question you now have the option to create a copy of that question.
When viewing the Question Text on the Details tab, the Question Text will be prefaced with "Copy of." The newly created copy will automatically be given draft status and will maintain the existing details and tags.
Remove a Question from the Bank
Retired Questions
Retiring a question is a new type of system status for questions. It allows you to prevent a question from being attached to new exams or being used in new exam posts when attached to existing exams. These are the features of a retired question:
Not eligible to any new exam
Excluded from new posts of existing exams
Has a comment field when retiring as to why something is being retired
Filtered out from the question index unless you opt to filter to view retired questions
Can reactivate retired questions and then will become available for use on exams again
Filter question bank to show retired questions
Check off the questions you want to reactivate
Click Reactivate (at bottom right)
Deleted Questions
Deleting a question works the same way it did previously in Question Management. Only a question not attached to any existing exams can be deleted, otherwise we recommend Retiring that question. Deleting a question will remove it from a Question Group.
Question Versions
Question versions have been expanded to be clearer and more useful in the new Question Management feature. However, the inclusion of a draft mode and review statuses will hopefully reduce the number of errors, and thus versions over all.
Versions listed in the modal will let you preview the previous version to be better able to compare what changed. Reverting to a previous version will create a new version based on that previous version, thereby preserving the complete history of a question.
Creating a new version of a question is as easy as making a change on a question and publishing or saving that version as a draft.
Labels
In this updated version of question management, labels replace folders. Like folders, labels can be associated with specific users to give those users access to questions assigned that label. More than one label can be assigned to a question which gives you maximum flexibility in identifying who questions from your bank are used (e.g. associated with a course and a specialty topic and something else as needed).
Label Index
The Label Index allows you to easily search and filter labels attached to exams & questions. You can decide which columns are visible (searchable).
Deleting a label will remove it from any associated questions and remove any permissions associated with that label.
New Labels
To create a label
Give the Label a name
Optionally give the Label a description
Specify the users that should be given permissions for anything associated with this label
For each user set if they should have Read Only or Read and Write permissions.
Note: Currently the permissions table for each user only affects questions, it does not affect exams or groups.
The use of labels extends any existing ACL rules for a question. If a question has both a course and label applied Elentra first uses the course contacts table, if fails to authorize at course level, it will check label and grant access as appropriate.
If labels have conflicting permissions and one question is tagged with both, the permissions are cumulative (so a user will get their highest permissable access).
Groups Index
The Question Groups interface has been re-done to mimic the features and experience of the Question Index. This includes the ability to search and filter with increased granularity (including the ability to filter by assessment type, language, course, exam, updated by author and updated date). You can also choose which columns are visible, thus searchable.
Add Question Group
The Setup tab allows you to specify the tile, an optional description, and to set if this Question Group will contain either Summative or Formative questions.
Add Exam
Exam Setup
The Exam Setup tab has received an interface refresh and now includes the ability to set Exams as Summative or Formative.
You can also specify an Exam Type, this is to support future enhancements of the Exam Management system and does not currently appear anywhere else in the system.
If your school supports multiple languages, you can specify what languages this exam is intended to support, this will assist you by automatically filtering out any questions that shouldn't apply to your exam.
Existing exams will not have an assessment type associated with it.
Add Questions
When adding a question to an exam you will now use the Question Index, it will allow you to search and filter as normal.
To add a question you select all the questions intended and then select "Attach Questions". To add a group, select "Show Groups" on a Question and then select Attach.
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