Item Banking

Benefits of Item Banking

It is a daunting and time-consuming task for schools to create new tests every year and, at the same time, to maintain the quality and consistency of the test standard. This same problem is faced in institutions of higher learning. As institutions of higher learning keep growing in size, the task of conducting formal assessments on students has become even more difficult and cost intensive. With the large number of students and numerous courses offered, the processes of preparing, conducting, and reporting with respect to both formative and summative assessments are major issues of concern. This is even more so for open and distance learning institutions in which learners are widely distributed and formal assessments such as examinations are not conducted in just one or two places but in many different learning environments.

A well-designed item bank system helps greatly in reducing the laborious tasks associated with test paper preparation and test item management. It enables the systematic classification and storage of test items and their associated data according to the predetermined criteria. It also facilitates the retrieval of items and generation of test papers based on the required criteria. Effective and efficient item banking should consist of the following functionalities:

• storage and organization of items according to subjects, topics, and cognitive levels of difficulty;
• autogeneration of a test specification table with reference to the required criteria;
• random selection of test items and autogeneration of print-ready test papers based on the test specification table generated;
• capturing of test scores and associated metadata for performing the necessary data analysis;
• autogeneration of a data analysis report on items used in a test or an examination;
• identification of poor items or faulty items based on the analysis for the purpose of improvement; and
• facilitating the reuse of test items in a controlled manner.

The structure of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) favors their storage and administration with an item bank. With more and more assessment examinations conducted in the form of MCQ item tests, it is worthwhile investing in a good item bank in which items can be deposited, added, used, enhanced, and reused while maintaining the reliability and validity of the test or examination paper.

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