🎞️ Managing a Shared Assignment or Question Bank (V2)

Each shared assignment or question bank in Classroom has a designated Bank Manager. The Bank Manager is very much like a librarian; they are responsible for the quality of the content housed in Classroom and its maintenance and accessibility. Bank Managers also play a key role in disseminating the content, especially common district assessments or assignments.

There can only be one Bank Manager for each shared question or assignment bank; however, one person can be the manager of more than one shared bank. For instance, you may manage both the District Approved Questions and District Assessments banks.

As a Bank Manager, you have full privileges to control the content within the bank. When you select the Shared Assignment Templates or Shared Question Templates from the directory tree on the left, you will see the Edit (pencil) icon. Select the Edit icon to gain access to the bank.

Shared Assignment Template Bank

As a bank manager for a shared assignment bank, you can:

Change the details of your bank
Make your bank active/inactive
Allow or prevent submissions to your bank
Approve or reject a submission to your bank.
Edit or delete a previously approved submission
Export an assignment to one or more gradebooks
Lock an assignment
Hide an assignment

The Details Tab

As the manager, you can alter the default Name of the bank denoted with a red asterisk; the name is required. You can also add, modify, or remove a Description of the bank and what content or curriculum it contains. The name and description are displayed when a user selects the Shared Assignment Templates link.

You can also make the bank active or inactive. That is, users can or cannot make submissions to the bank. Select the Active (green) toggle button to deny submissions to a bank. When inactive (white), users cannot select the bank for sharing when composing an assignment. You may want to inactivate a bank at the end of a school year.

You can also prevent users from Importing (green) or using the contents of your bank. If you do not select the Importable toggle (white), a user will not be able to access the contents of the bank. Consider denying users import access to the bank right before a testing window.

Turning both options off effectively hides the bank from all users except you, the manager.

The Candidates Tab

When a user creates an assignment and wants to deposit it into your bank, it will end up on the Candidates Tab. As the manager, you are responsible for reviewing the assignment and any questions for accuracy, relevancy, and adherence to your district's approved curriculum. Therefore, you have full privileges to approve, deny, edit, or delete the assignment.

To view the assignment details and the questions it contains, select the Information icon to the right of any candidate assignment name.

The entire settings of the assignment are displayed in view-only mode, including a list of the assignment's questions. Here, you should carefully analyze the assignment and decide whether it will be included in your bank.

If you approve of the assignment, you can accept it into the bank by either selecting the Checkmark (approving the assignment as is) or by selecting the Edit icon (placing it in edit mode for revisions.

Remember, you have complete control of the assignments in your bank. In Edit mode, you can alter any portion of the assignment, including its questions. This is a good option if you intend to make minor changes; however, consider rejecting the assignment and notifying the author if you feel many changes are required. This will ensure the original intent and integrity of the assignment is maintained. The author will see the assignment is approved on the Sharing>>Banks tab of the assignment.

If you consider the assignment flawed in some way, for instance, the author submitted it to the wrong bank, or the questions do not align with the chosen standards, you can deny the assignment by selecting the Delete icon.

A dialogue box will pop up asking you to give the author a reason why you are rejecting the assignment. Be specific; if warranted, tell the author to make the changes and submit the assignment to the bank again. You may even want to follow up the rejection with a detailed email. Assignments are submitted to banks after an author's best efforts and no doubt have been reviewed multiple times, so whatever errors you find are usually unintentional. The author will see your reason on their Sharing >> Banks tab assignment.

Once an assignment has been approved and becomes a part of your bank, the tie to the original author and the original assignment is broken. If the author changes the original assignment, it will not be reflected on the assignment that now lives in your bank. Conversely, if you make changes to the assignment in your bank, they will not be reflected on the author's original assignment.

Assignments imported from your shared bank are, however, linked. If Teachers A and B import an assignment from your bank, each teacher now owns a copy of your bank's assignment. The copies can be independently edited without affecting the assignment in your bank. However, the copies remain linked to the imported initial assignment in your bank for standard and item analysis. Because of this flexibility, we HIGHLY RECOMMEND all district-approved ASSESSMENTS be LOCKED to prevent them from being modified by staff after import/export. This will maintain the assessment's integrity on all reports and analytics.

The Assignment Tab

Once you have accepted a candidate submission into your bank, it moves to the Assignments Tab. On the Assignments tab, you can filter all the bank's assignments with a keyword search or by selecting the standards used. You can also filter by Type, Grade Level, Content Area, or # of Questions.

Click the Row Actions & Options to the right of the Assignment name.

	The Information icon will give you a read-only view of the assignment settings and all its questions.
	The Taker icon will open a new browser window (the current Classroom window stays open) and allow you to access and "take" the assignment as a student would without actually making a student submission.
	The Export icon allows the bank manager to push an assignment to one or more existing gradebooks. A pop-up window with a list of all the gradebooks available is displayed. Use the Schools button to narrow the list by school(s). Use the Courses button to see only gradebooks that used the settings from a particular course (by course code). Use the Search box to enter any keyword. Every gradebook created has an owner, and the owner's name is displayed here in parentheses to allow easy searching by first or last name. To export the assignment to one or more gradebooks, select the Add symbol to the right of the gradebook name, then select Export.
	If you want to preserve the integrity of an assignment, you should Lock it. The purpose of any shared bank is to prevent duplication of effort by educators by openly sharing curriculum and other resources between them. Teachers may import and modify an assignment to suit their particular needs. Once teachers import or copy an assignment from a shared bank into their gradebook, they have full edit privileges on the copy. It is a new assignment and belongs to the teacher. However, suppose you are using shared banks in Classroom to house district-approved assessments. In that case, you probably do not want staff members altering the assessment in any way once they import it into their gradebook. To prevent a user from editing an imported assignment, set the Lock icon by clicking it. Once locked and after import, the assignment (or assessment) will display a "cannot be edited" message to the user. Only a few areas can be altered: the assignment schedule (Open, Due, Close, Published), which students are included/excluded from taking the assignment, and the student submissions.
	Bank managers can also hide assignments from being displayed in a bank. To make an assignment Invisible. Once hidden, only the bank manager can see the assignment. A good time to hide an assignment is before or after a testing window if, for example, you do not want any users to import it. You can also hide it if you are working on modifications to the assignment and do not want to take the chance of having a staff member import it before it is ready.
	Clone
	Bank managers have full edit privileges on all assignments in their bank. You can change any setting on the assignment or its questions. Remember, when you change an assignment in the shared bank, the author's original assignment and any copies (imports) of the assignment will not reflect your changes.
	Finally, even after approval, bank managers can Delete an assignment from the bank. The author of the assignment and any user who imported the assignment will not be notified. The imported assignments will also lose the common link required for reports and standard analytics. Therefore, we recommend you not delete any assignment whose student submissions have been migrated to Homeroom (most district-approved assessments are migrated to Homeroom). Instead, you can hide the assignment. Please note: deleting an assignment cannot be reversed!

Shared Question Template Bank

Managers of shared question banks have nearly identical privileges to managers of shared assignment banks, with two exceptions: They cannot preview a question with the Taker or Export a question to a gradebook. Neither action would make sense!

As a bank manager, you have full privileges to control the content within the bank. When you select Shared Question Templates from the directory tree on the left, you will see the Edit (pencil) icon.

As a bank manager for a shared question bank, you can:

Make your bank active/inactive
Allow or prevent submissions to your bank
Change the details of your bank
Approve or reject a submission to your bank.
Edit or delete a previously approved submission
Hide a question
Lock a question

The Details Tab

As the manager, you can alter the default Name of the bank denoted with a red asterisk; the name is required. You can also add, modify, or remove a Description of the bank and what content or curriculum it contains. Users select the Shared Question Templates link, and the name and description are displayed.

You can also make the bank active or inactive; that is, users can or cannot make submissions to the bank. Select the Active (green) toggle button to deny submissions to a bank. When inactive (white), users cannot select the bank for sharing when composing a question. If the contents are year-centric, you may want to inactivate a bank at the end of a school year.

You can also prevent users from importing or using the contents of your bank. If you select the Importable (green) toggle to access the contents of the bank, white, and a user will not be able to access the contents of the bank. Consider denying users import access to the bank if the curriculum is no longer applicable.

Turning both options off effectively hides the bank from all users except you, the manager.

The Candidates Tab

When a user creates a question and wants to deposit it into your bank, it will be on the Candidates tab. As the manager, you are responsible for reviewing the question for accuracy, relevancy, chosen standards, and adherence to your district's approved curriculum. Therefore, you have full privileges to approve, deny, edit, or delete the question.

	Select the Information icon to view the question details.
	Selecting the Checkmark approves the question as is, without revision.
	Selecting the Edit icon approves the question but places it into edit mode for your revisions. Remember, you have complete control of the questions in your bank. In Edit mode, you can alter any portion of the question. This is a good option if you intend to make minor changes; however, consider rejecting the question and notifying the author if you feel many changes are required. This will ensure the original intent and integrity of the question is maintained. The author will see that the question is approved on the original Sharing>>Banks tab.
	If you consider the question flawed in some way, for instance, the author submitted it to the wrong bank or the question does not align with the chosen standard(s), you can deny the question by selecting the Delete icon. A dialogue box asks you to give the author why you are rejecting the question. Be specific; if warranted, tell the author to make the changes and submit the question to the bank again. The author will see your reason on their original question's Sharing >> Banks tab of their original question.

The Questions Tab

Once you have accepted a candidate submission into your bank, it moves to the Questions tab. On the Questions tab, you can filter all the bank's questions with a keyword search or by selecting the standards used. You can also filter by Grade Level, Subjects, Assignment Question Types, Standards, Difficulty Levels, Complexity, Knowledge Types, and Depth of Knowledge.

	The Information icon will give you a read-only view of the question and its settings.
	If you want to preserve the integrity of the question, you should Lock it. The purpose of any shared bank is to prevent duplication of effort by educators by openly sharing curriculum and other resources between them. A teacher may import a question and modify it to suit their needs. Once a teacher imports or copies a question from a shared bank into their assignment, they have full edit privileges on the copy. It is a new question and belongs to the teacher. However, if you feel the question's intent will be lost if altered, lock it so staff members cannot edit the question once they import it into an assignment. To prevent a user from editing an imported question, set the Lock icon by clicking it. Once locked and after import, the question cannot be edited, and there will be no edit or delete options. The only option is for the teacher to cut (remove) the question from their assignment.
	Bank managers can also hide questions from being displayed in a bank. To make a question Invisible, select the icon that resembles an eye. Once hidden, only the bank manager can see the question. If you are working on modifications to the question and do not want to take the chance of having a staff member import it before it is ready, you should hide it.
	Bank managers have full edit privileges on all questions in their bank. Select the Edit icon (pencil) or click the question text to modify a question. You can change any setting on the question, including the question text. When you change a question in the shared bank, the author's original question and any copies (imports) of the question will not reflect your changes.
	Finally, even after approval, bank managers can Delete a question from the bank by selecting the trash can icon. The question's author and any user who imported the question will not be notified. The imported question will also lose the common link required for reports and standard analytics. If you ever want to see a report about the question, we recommend you hide it rather than delete it. Please note: deleting a question cannot be reversed!