Creating and Uploading a Question Bank (ALL USERS)

Can’t find a Question Bank in the Community that fits your needs? No problem—Carousel gives you the freedom to create and upload your own.

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Two types of Question Bank can be uploaded:

• Free Text
• Multiple Choice

Question Bank Creation Top Tips 

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Free Text Question Bank

Free Text Question Banks can only be used to set Free Text Quizzes.  A template is attached at the bottom of this article. For our Top Tips on writing Free Text Question Banks, see this blog post: Five Top Tips for Writing Question Banks.

The file format should be as follows:

• An Excel file (.XLXS)
• A single tab
• Four columns on the worksheet with these column headings:
  • Number
  • Question
  • Answer
  • Topic

Here's an example file for a Free Text Chemistry Question Bank:

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Multiple Choice Question Bank

Multiple Choice Question Banks must be uploaded with multiple choice answers but can then be used to set either Free Text or Multiple Choice Quizzes according to your Quiz creation settings. A template is attached at the bottom of this article. For guidance on writing good multiple choice questions, see this blog post: 4 Simple Tips for Improving your MCQs.

The file format should be as follows:

• An Excel file (.XLXS)
• A single tab
• Columns on the worksheet with these column headings:
  • Number
  • Question
  • Answer
  • Topic
  • Wrong Answer 1
  • Wrong Answer 2
  • Wrong Answer 3
  • Wrong Answer 4

Note: You can have up to 4 wrong answers, but you can choose to have fewer if preferred. 

Here's an example file for a multiple choice History (Roman Britain) Question Bank:

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Question Bank Creation Top Tips

1. Question Banks can be saved as either PRIVATE, GLOBAL, SCHOOL or MAT.
2. Make sure your questions are numbered in sequential order, starting from 1.
3. Use identical topic names where you want the system to recognise questions within the same topic. The system will create a new topic for every discrete topic name found, so if you have "Number, shape and space" and "Number, shape & space", the system will consider those to be separate topics.
4. Only use supported characters. Question Banks commonly get rejected by the system because of the use of unsupported characters – especially when it comes to subscript and superscript. We support most unicode characters, but this does mean a few characters are excluded - particularly in superscript/subscript, and their use will result in the Question Bank getting rejected. When using subscript, superscript and notations in particular (such as in vector equations) we strongly recommend using the Excel "Insert >> Symbol" function, or copying and pasting from an online character bank (especially if using Google Sheets.) This list shows which superscript/subscripts characters are and are not available as unicode, but as a rule of thumb if it is available as a symbol in Excel then it should be supported. A list of copy and pastable subscript and superscript characters can be found here.
5. To ensure percentages format correctly in the answer field when uploaded, they will need to be formatted as 'text'.
6. A double line break in the spreadsheet will ensure different lines of text are separated onto different lines on the flashcard.
7. When setting a quiz there is the option for the questions to be displayed in sequential order, please be aware the flashcards during revision will be randomised so questions should contain all context required rather than relying on the content of previous questions.
8. Questions and answers must be a maximum of 700 characters in length. If they are longer, the file will be rejected.  Topic names shouldn't, for both upload and clarity, exceed 200 characters.
9. Question Bank column headers must begin in cell A1, and be named: NUMBER, QUESTION, ANSWER, TOPIC, (WRONG ANSWER 1,  WRONG ANSWER 2, WRONG ANSWER 3 for MCQ banks)
10. PLEASE NOTE:  Study Packs will always be displayed as Free Text answers so this should be taken into consideration when writing MCQ enabled banks.

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In the following video, our Education Director Adam Boxer explains how to create and upload a Free Text Question Bank:

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If you need any advice on creating or uploading Question Banks, please contact us on [e-mail]