Randomize questions in a Test via the Question Bank

Hi @ejohnson, thanks for sharing this idea.

@Martin Nowak actually just recently brought up a very similar use case in our internal Slack channel (albeit at a larger scale) for configuring a Test via the Question bank with some randomized and some fixed questions. I’ll share exactly what Martin shared below as a best practice, including what I would recommend for scoring settings. I’ve converted this idea as a question and will mark this as a best answer, since we get this question a lot.

I have a customer with a very specific requirement, they need one test to show 120 questions in total, consisting of:

• 60 fixed questions, shown with every attempt
• 60 randomly selected questions (out of a pool of 100 questions)

My idea is to enable Show a certain number of questions from each category LMS selects questions at random and they change for each attempt’ and then set up two categories:

• Category A: Show 60 out of 60 questions (the fixed questions, shown at every attempt although in random order)
• Category B: Show 60 out of 100 questions (60 random questions)

@ejohnson, for your use case, you’d want to include the first 3 test questions in a single category in the question bank, then include the fourth question in a different category. That way, you can configure any number of the first 3 questions to display randomly in the test and ensure that the fourth question is always presented.

The following two articles can really help you better understand how the question bank functions and how to create a test from the question bank:

• Managing the Question Bank
• Creating Tests and Managing Test Questions

Best Practices for scoring when using a randomized number of questions in your exam

I'd recommend using Express score as percentage rather than Express score as numbers. It makes it easier to standardize scoring when using a varying sample of questions for each test since there's the potential for certain questions to be scored differently, depending on how they're configured in the question bank.

Check out the Score Management for Tests knowledge article for more info about managing scoring.

Here’s another post on a similar topic, in case you’d like to connect with other Community members who have discussed this:

I hope this helps!