Importing Third Party Questions into Test Bank

Most publishers or third-party companies offer instructor resources for your course textbook that includes testbanks. If you wish to download those test bank files and add the questions into your course’s testbank, follow the steps below.

Please note, the steps below are general steps. Some publishers may require assistance from the eLearning team depending on the test bank format or publisher’s instructions.

  1. Navigate to the publisher or company website and download the testbank(s) to your computer.
  2. If it downloads as a compressed zip file, right click on the file and “Extract All”. If you don’t see that option, continue on to the next step.
    Example of a compressed zip file
    Extract all option for the compressed zip file
  3. Go to your Moodle course and select the “More” option on the course navigation bar. Select “Question Bank” from the drop-down list.
    More option with Question Bank on drop-down list
  4. In the first drop-down list on the page, select the “Import” option.
    Question dropdown list with "Import" option
  5. For File Format, choose the most appropriate option based on the file type of the test banks you downloaded. See below for reference for the formats you will more than likely need:
    a. Aiken format: simple format used to import multiple choice questions from a text (.txt) file.
    b. Blackboard: enabled questions saved in all Blackboard export formats to be imported via a dat or zip file (an unzipped .zip file). For zip files, images import is supported.
    c. Examview: enables the import of questions from Examview 4 XML files. For newer versions of Examview, Blackboard format may be used.
    d. Examview exported as Blackboard 6.0-7.0: compatible with older versions of ExamView
    e. GIFT format: enables mulitple choice, true/false, short answer, matching, missing word, numerical and essay questions to be imported or exported via a text file.
    f. Moodle XML format: Moodle specific format for importing or exporting questions. (NOTE: Elsevier xml files will not work with this option)
    If the option you require is not listed above, contact eLearning.

  6. Under the “Import Questions from File” section, drag and drop your test bank file into the box. If you have several files, you must do one file at a time.

  7. Click “Import”.
    Import Testbank page
  8. Next, you’ll see a page that mentions it’s parsing your questions from the file. You can review the questions to make sure they are all accounted for (it will not show you the answer choices on this page). Hit Continue once done.
  9. You should now see the category you created with a total count of the questions included.