D2L Brightspace Tips: Change Quiz Question Pools to Sections
If you copy quizzes containing question pools to another course, but do not copy the entire Question Library where those questions are saved, then the questions become "orphaned" and cannot be added to the Question Library or other quizzes in the copied course. Any edits to these orphaned questions will only exist in the pool where you made the edits. Copy the entire Question Library when copying quizzes and only edit pool questions in the Question Library to avoid these problems. Nevertheless, you can use the following steps to change pools to sections so that the questions can be imported into the Question Library and used in other quizzes.
Similar steps can also be used to bulk randomize answer choices or to edit the text of multiple questions at once.
Change orphaned pool questions into sections
- Go to Course Admin and Import / Export / Copy Components
- Choose Export as Brightspace Package and click Start
- Check the box next to Quizzes, choose Select individual items to export, and click Continue
- Check the box next to the quiz to export and click Continue
- Click Export and download the zip file when it is ready
- Unzip the zip file and open the quiz_d2l_###.xml file in a text/code editor, such as Sublime or BBEdit
- Find all instances of RAND_ and Replace them with SECT_
- Save the quiz_d2l_###.xml file and compress the D2LExport- folder back into a zip file. (Do not make changes to any of the other files within the folder.)
- On Windows, right-click on the folder and choose Send to and Compressed (zipped) folder
- On a Mac, right-click on the folder and choose Compress
- Go back to Course Admin and Import / Export / Copy Components
- Choose Import Components and from a course package, then click Start
- Drag and drop or select the zip file you created
- Click Import All Components
- Once the import has finished, return to Assessments and Quizzes
- Open the imported quiz and verify that the pool questions are now regular questions within sections
- Go to the Question Library, click Import, and choose Browse Existing Questions
- Click Source in the top right and select the imported quiz
- Check the boxes next to the sections that were previously pools and click Import
- Now that these sections have been added to the Question Library, they can be used to create pools in quizzes