INTRODUCTION

Question banking is an attempt to integrate both teaching and evaluation. Preparation of question
bank makes use of accumulated experience of teachers which provides effective examining of
students. Question bank must have a large number of questions of a particular course.

DEFINITION –

Question bank is a large collection of test items developed by a group of trained and experienced
professionals and printed on index cards or stored in the memory of a digital computer along
with certain supporting data and capable of being reproduced, whenever needed. -The question
bank may be defined as a kind of reservoir of a number of sets of questions on each subject in
which examination is to be held and from which a set for any particular examination could be
picked out at random and at short notice and sent to the press. -The question bank is a planned
library of test items designed to fulfill certain predetermined purposes. It should cover the entire
prescribed text.

BLUE PRINTING OF DEVELOPING QUESTION BANK

Objective/behaviour aspect: It refers to the expected learning outcomes in terms of abilities like
recall, recognition, translation, extrapolation, application, analysis, evaluation and any other
abilities. • Content/subject aspect: The content aspect includes the unit and subunit. A good
question pool will be one that contains questions on all the topics in a subject testing all abilities.

PURPOSES

• To improve the teaching learning process. It is an inbuilt feedback mechanism for the
improvement of questions. • Questions from the question bank can be used by the teacher at the
pre- testing stage, for setting question papers, for measuring pupil's achievement, etc. • The
question bank is very important for preparation for competitive exams. Through instructional
efforts the pupils' growth will be obtained.

GUIDELINES OF QUESTION BANK

  The question bank system should consider following points in development of question
bank:
 Questions must be drawn from each unit of the subject.
 Questions drawn must be according to educational objectives. .
 It should include questions of every type as per section such as long answer, short answer
and very short answer questions
 Questions must specify the expected length; marks allotted and suggested time for
completion. Questions paper must include questions of all difficulty levels and each
question must be marked with its difficulty level.

Answer key should be provided. .

 Each question may be appended with suitable codes to indicate the learning outcome
mapped to, the topic in the syllabus that it examines, the difficulty and discrimination
ability.
 Faculty must be trained and oriented to procedure and pre-requisite for preparation of
question banks.
 Institutions are suggested to conduct Faculty Development Programmes
(FDP)/Workshops on preparation of question banks
 A committee should be set up for proofreading of the text in question papers.

PREPARATION OF QUESTION BANK

 Specify outcomes and learning outcomes to be tested.

 Decide the question bank format
 Analysis of subject matter
 Writing or pooling of questions by panel or experts
 Review the questions
 Pilot study/sample group testing
 Item analysis
 Assessment and discrimination ability of questions
 Final selection of questions for question bank
Preparation of question banks requires a lot of cooperative efforts. Experts have to be tapped
from all the available sources and pooled together. Writers and reviewers of questions for the
bank should have, besides their expertise in the subject content and teaching experience,
sufficient grounding in evaluation methodology.

The following things to be kept in mind while preparing question:

A large number of questions should be prepared on each topic or unit of the syllabus. The whole
syllabus of a particular class should be divided into different convenient topics.

• Different experts should be assigned different topics in order of their preferences. Spent
adequate amount of time in developing the questions.

• Match the questions to the content taught. Try to make the question valid, reliable, and
balanced.

• Use a variety of testing methods.

• Write questions that test skills other than to measure knowledge, to measure comprehension, to
measure application, to measure analysis, to measure synthesis and to measure evaluation.

• To select items finally, after making item analysis, experts should be asked to construct items
three times more than the actual items to be selected. All the selected questions are standardized
by adopting a systematic procedure

PLANNING OF QUESTION BANK

 Analysis of subject matter content

 Collection of test items: Teachers and item writers specially trained for purposes, post
examination paper
 Try out and item analysis
 Using item analysis data
 Banking selected items
 Administering sample test
Screening of questions: After the questions are written can be passed on to other members of
the group for the comments. Then, these comments are passed on to the question paper setter or
the author of the questions corrections. Then it can be passed on to a committee team to review
and finalize it.

Item review: Critical review of items is essential. And it is essential before the items and the
item-writer gets locked into a situation where they have to make do with what they've got. Two
words are sometimes used for this part of the

process-'panelling' draws attention to the need for a panel of reviewers, or more than one critic;
'moderating' draws attention to the actual process of the meeting-moderating the more extreme
efforts of the writer by exposing the work to other views. Though it may seem wasteful, panels
should always be supplied (as far as is possible) with more than is eventually needed: more items
and often more distractors for each item.

Process of item analysis: Item analysis indicates which item may be too easy or too difficult and
which may fail to discriminate between the better and poor examines. Item analysis suggests
why an item has not functioned effectively and how it might be improved. A test is more
reliable, if item- analysis has been developed. However, from the item-editor's point of view, it
should be noted that at least five other things are under analysis during this vital stage of the
whole development process.

Information is obtained about:

• The parts of an item, especially in multiple-choice format with its stems, keyed answers and
distracters;

The integrity or worthwhileness of the item as a whole;

The performance of the item as a discrete test element;

The performance of an item with regard to other items in the same set or test

The integrity or worth wholeness of the test as a whole.

The test length should also be checked. If a large number of trial candidates are found to have
omitted one particular item, or failed to complete the full test, then this tells us something about
test length. If everyone completes all items, this suggests that the test time might be shortened or
the number of items increased, particularly if the trial test supervisors confirm that large numbers
of candidates sat around after finishing early in the trial session.

Once every item is clean, making up the final form actually begins. As in so many matters to do
with test development, there is a sequence of activity which should be followed, in order to
ensure that new error or flaw does not appear and the test as completely as possible meets the
original specification.

Editing for publication –

Read the item analysis and sort the items (or groups items) into three piles:

1. Ready to go

2. Needing editing

3. Possible rejects.

-Edit items and establish a final pool of items for the test.

Check the omit rate to optimum test establish length.

-Check the specification against this pool for the number and qualities of the items available.
Reinstate//replace any usable 'rejects' if all the objectives are not satisfactorily covered.

-Assign the items to a tentative order for the whole test and enter the scoring scheme at the end
of each section of the test.

Check this order for:

1. Order of difficulty (for example, in a set of multiple-choice items, make sure some easy ones
occur early, to give the candidate some confidence);

2. Keyed answer order and distribution;

3. Balance and variety of item type.

 Write or insert appropriate instructions for candidates. Include suggestions for time to be
spent on each section.
 Assign the items to a preliminary paging of the test-paper: some may have to be moved to
allow a more satisfactory layout. Allow sufficient space for answering, if there is to be no
separate answer sheet.
 Number all separate items consecutively. Use letters to distinguish sections of the test if
necessary.
 Make a mock-up of the test paper (and answer sheet if used). Read the paper through
from beginning to end, to check language, numbering (pages and any line-numbers used),
all labelling and diagrams, and the layout in general.
 Photocopy the mock-up and ask a colleague who knows the subject (but who has not seen
the test) to 'do the test' on this copy.
 Check the trial completion by the colleague.
 If possible, put the test aside for a week and then do it yourself as a final check. Only
then can you send the copy to the printer.

Preparing the question cards: It is the easiest method where an institution can prepare for its
own. The finalized question may be written on the card using various colours for essay, short
answer and objective type questions. Then these cards can be properly arranged with the details
of the topic, estimated difficulty level, subject specification, estimated time limit, etc.

Review and removal of unwanted questions: A question bank may become a store of outdated
material after some years, if not evaluated at regular intervals. Enrichment of questions by
updating, replacing, discarding, modifying, adding new questions, regrouping and classification
is to be an ongoing process to give the question bank a dynamic look.

ADVANTAGES OF QUESTION BANK

 It is storage of a large number of questions.

 It saves time and energy over conventional test development.
 Question bank makes available ready-made test items for use by every teacher.
 It provides platform for discussing curriculum goals and objectives.
  Most of the examination weakness is minimized by using question banks.

DISADVANTAGES OF QUESTION BANK

 It requires a great deal of work in terms of preparation and planning.

 All the items should be analysed before including in the question bank.
 Item analysis involves the use of various mathematical and statistical procedures.