Who can purchase Item Bank?
The Item Bank Add-on is available for purchase to schools and districts with an organization-wide Formative Gold plan. To request a quote for your organization Click Here.
What is Item Bank?
Item Bank is a collection of subject-specific Free Response, Multiple Selection and Multiple Choice questions, professionally created by subject-matter experts, that have already been tagged to common core standards as well as Depths of Knowledge (DOK), that teachers can attach and edit into formatives.
Adding Standard Sets
To use the Item Bank effectively, Standard Sets must be added to your account. Please follow the instructions in this article to add the standard sets for your school, district or state. If you choose to add questions from the Item Bank that are tagged to standards that you have not added to your account yet, upon navigating back to the "Edit" tab of the formative you will be prompted to save them to your account.
NOTE: You must save the standards to your account if you wish to draw Progress on Standards reports after your students have taken the formative.
If you do not add the standards to your account, data will not be presented about them.
Accessing the Item Bank
To access the item bank you will first need to open and access the formative you wish to add the questions to, or create a new formative. Then, from within the formative:
Click on the blue + button to open the "add item" window
Click on "Search existing items"
Click to access the Item Bank tab at the top of the screen
Searching for questions in the Item Bank
From the Item Bank tab:
Click on the Filters button at the top right corner to expand the Filters view (will appear on the left side of your screen).
Click on the carat under Item Type to choose one or more of the available question types by check-marking them. Or leave this filter un-checked to search by other filters and have the Item Bank present all question types available.
Click the carat under Standards and check-mark any standard(s) you'd like to find questions for. You can choose as many standards as you'd like. You can search for specific standards by starting to type into this field and the dropdown will adjust to suggest matches accordingly.
Selected standards will appear on your filters view. To remove unwanted selections simply click the X next to the standard, or click the X to the far right of the filter to remove them all at once
Click on the carat under Depth of Knowledge to choose specific DOK level(s) to search from by check-marking them, or leave the field un-checked to search from all DOK levels
As soon as you check-mark your first filter, matching Item Bank questions will begin to appear on the middle part of your screen.
This view will present the start of the question and the standards and DOK tagged to it. To view the full question click on it, and a right side panel will open up to present you with the full question.
NOTE: Within the Item Bank you will only be able to see the question/instructions part. Any answer keys for auto-grading purposes and/or Rubrics attached to a question will be visible on your formative's "Edit" tab after you add the questions to it.
Adding Item Bank questions to your formative
To add questions from the Item Bank to your formative, check-mark the box next to them. You can checkmark as many questions as you want this way. The questions will not be added directly into the formative yet, but to a tallied list which you can then transfer into the formative in bulk by clicking the "Add Items" button at the top of the screen.
If you're going with this method, to remove individual selections from your list of questions to be added, simply un-check the box.
To remove all your selections click the trash can icon next to the questions' count
Once you are ready to add the questions you've chosen to your formative click the blue "Add Items" button at the top and they will all be added to your formative in the order you've check-marked them (you will have the ability to re-order the questions in the formative after they are added)
If you've clicked to expend the view of a specific question, you can also choose to add it directly into the formative by clicking the blue "Add Item To Formative" at the bottom of the right side panel. If you choose this method, you will not be able to remove the question until you navigate back into the "Edit" tab of the formative and delete the question from it.
Navigating back to the formative
When you are done adding your questions and ready to go back to your formative, simply click the X at the top right corner of your screen:
**Please note Item Bank is only available on a full organization-wide plan. It can not be purchased for individual schools or departments within a district-wide or school-wide plan.
Adjusting question settings
Once back on the "Edit" page of your formative you will have the ability to style and define your question settings as normal:
Re-order the questions on the formative - including moving questions into content boxes to enhance PDF/Image/Doc etc., or batching questions into sections on the formative
Remove questions from the formative
Adjust the point value or the rubric points
Toggle on "Partial Credit" on Multiple Selection questions
Toggle on "Randomize Order" of answer choices for Multiple Choice and Multiple Selection questions
Frequent Q&A
🙋🏿♂️ My account has been downgraded to the Bronze or Silver plan, or my school/district decided to stop paying for the Item Bank - What will happen to the formatives I previously created with Item Bank questions?
Item Bank questions will remain available to use as long as your account is upgraded to the Gold plan and your organization is actively subscribed to use the Item Bank. If your organization is no longer subscribed to the service, or if your account is no longer a member of the organization's plan - the formatives previously created with Item Bank questions will be disabled and you will no longer be able to assign them (though you will be able to view them and access the student data associated with them).
🙋🏼 Can Item Bank questions be edited?
Once added to a formative, Item Bank questions can be manually edited. However, they will still be tracked and tagged as an Item Bank question and become unavailable should your account lose access to the Add-on.
🙋🏽 Why can I no longer assign the formative I created with Item Bank questions?
Either your account has been downgraded from your organization's Gold plan, or your organization did not renew their subscription to the Item Bank service.
While you will not be able to assign the formative again, you can still view it and the student data that was previously recorded on it.