Shared Question and Assignment Banks and Analysis

Quick Links

One of the key features of Classroom is the ability for educators to share content in the form of questions and assignments they have created. Classroom uses a shared resource (banks) to make this content widely available. And just like a real bank, educators can make deposits of their questions and assignments or assessments.

These repositories have a bank manager who is responsible for reviewing the deposits. They may check for accuracy or relevancy. They may read passages to ensure paragraphs are correctly identified in questions and may ensure formulae can be solved, and in general, they carefully and critically examine new content. In this manner, educators can be assured of quality.

Classroom allows districts to build as many banks as they need. They can be categorized by subject, school, and grade level. There can be banks for support teams and curriculum development groups. There can be assessment banks and banks which develop content for certain standards. Because of this flexibility, SDS recommends key personnel consider the purpose and use of each bank before creating them, as all of the banks and their content are available to any educator in the district.

Classroom also supports third-party question banks, like the one created by the NWEA (Northwest Evaluation Association). The NWEA item bank is not part of the standard subscription to Classroom and must be purchased at an additional cost per student. It may prove cost-effective for your district, as the NWEA has over 75,000 questions aligned with state standards. Staff can begin using Classroom immediately without first generating their own questions.

If your district has purchased the NWEA item bank and you have any content issues or questions, please contact us at support@schooldata.net. We will do whatever we can to find a resolution. 

Browse (back to Quick Links)

Click the blue hyperlink. Select the question and click the magnifying glass at the end for more information or to edit.

Filtering Questions or Assignments (back to Quick Links)

From the Classroom Home screen, select Shared Question Templates from the directory tree on the left or the links under Browse.

You will see a list of banks created by your district and populated with questions and assignments created by other educators in your district. Your district bank managers review these questions and assignments for quality and content before being added.

If your district purchased it, you may also see the NWEA question bank, which has over 79,000 questions aligned to the CCSS.

Select a shared bank. Once you select a bank, you can filter it by subject or grade. 

If you do not see the filters, click the Filter Actions gear to the right and select the Filter Display Mode and/or the Available Filters.

The filter options include locating standards by Keyword Search, Grade Level, Subjects, Assignment Question Types, Standards, Difficulty Levels, Complexity, Knowledge Types, and Depth of Knowledge. If you select multiple options, you will narrow the resulting list accordingly. However, if you use too many options, you may have no results. Also, some questions and assignment templates may not have any standards attached to them, so using the standards filter option may reduce the results. 

Once you locate the content you are interested in, you can see details about the question or assignment by selecting one of two magnifying glasses to the right.

The first magnifying glass opens a pop-up window of information.

The second magnifying glass allows you to see an example of the assignment in Taker to view details, reset the answer, flag or review, and submit.

Finally, to clear any filters chosen, select the "X" next to the search, select the Select None or Reset buttons, or deselect the filter option by selecting “Hidden” from the Filter Actions gear.

Bank Managers (back to Quick Links)

The manager of any district bank assumes responsibility for the bank and, in essence, "owns" the content. They can:

• Approve or reject submissions (if a submission is rejected, they can add a comment as to why)
• Edit or delete items in the bank (this is part of the quality control feature and ensures accurate content)
• Lock assignments to prevent them from being edited (if the bank contains district-wide assessments, this prevents inaccurate data)
• Export assignments to gradebooks by school, grade, or teacher (very helpful for pushing out district-wide assessments within a short window)

If you would like to create, modify or remove a shared bank and/or become a bank manager, contact us at support@schooldata.net.  

Shared Banks Promote District and School-Level Analysis (back to Quick Links)

Teachers who use Classroom as their gradebook have access to both question and assignment analysis that shows whether their students are mastering the standards they teach. They also can export this information to an Excel file and print out or save a PDF. And the result of certain assignments, like required grade level district assessments, are migrated to Homeroom nightly.

But true district-wide question (item) analysis comes from shared banks.

When an educator submits a question or assignment to a bank, and the manager approves it, a duplicate of the original question is created. This new question has new identification in Classroom, and all connection to the original question or assignment is lost. In effect, it becomes a "parent." While this may seem inappropriate, it is one of the strongest features of shared banks, as analysis and reporting at the school and district level on any question or assignment can occur.

If an educator goes to a bank and imports either a question or an assignment "parent" from the bank, that question or assignment is duplicated. It becomes an entirely new question or assignment which the educator owns. In essence, a child of the parent. However, the child's connection to the parent remains in this case. Additionally, the educator's question or assignment is connected to all the other educators who have also imported the parent question or assignment...the siblings. This architecture of parent to child and child to siblings means that the results of any student who encounters the questions or takes the assignments can be compiled as a single unit...the family.

Exporting these "family" assignments or assessments to Homeroom via a *nightly migration allows for comparison to state and third-party assessment results and student subgroup and profile information. Question-by-question analysis can be performed at the teacher, school, and district levels. Assignment and assessment results can be reviewed across grades, schools, and districts. Educators can see exactly which standards students are mastering. They can see whether or not questions prove to be good measures of the standards. And they can follow these trends across multiple school years.

*nightly migration happens to those Assignments the data admin has Linked using the Classroom Admin utility: "Link Classroom Assignment Template to Homeroom Assessment Tests.”

Classroom and shared banks aid districts in generating a quality, long-lasting curriculum where students can gain competency on standards.