This is one of the new AI Design Assistant tools in Learn Ultra that have been made available to staff from January 2024. Their use was recommended by the Educational Development Committee in November and approved by Education Committee in December 2023.
Purpose
Use of this tool is entirely optional. It can generate a question bank of suggested questions, based on a Learn Ultra document (the editable HTML page, not an attached file).
These questions can then be deployed in one or more tests anywhere in the course. They would be good candidates for creating diagnostic, or formative tests. At this time we don’t recommend their use in summative assessment without a lot of further testing.
This tool is only visible to staff with any one of the following roles in the course:
- Instructor
- Module Administrator
- Course Builder
- Teaching Assistant
Video demonstration
Step-by-Step guide
Finding the tool
The process begins by opening the relevant Learn Ultra document (this can be in a folder or a learning module). Scroll to the bottom of the page and you should see a link labelled Auto-generate question bank:
Click the Auto-generate question bank link to begin.
Getting good results
This tool behaves slightly differently from the others, in that it uses the content of the Learn Ultra document to generate the prompt. That is why this tool doesn’t have a Description box. As such the suggested questions displayed should be a good match to the subject. By default it displays a mix of question types, so you may want to configure it using the settings panel on the left hand side to pick questions of just one type, or of a specific complexity and ask it to generate again. Each field in the settings panel is explained below:
Question type
Use this to determine the type of questions you’d like the tool to generate. The options are:
- Inspire me! – the default (a mix of question types)
- Essay
- Fill in the blank
- Matching
- Multiple choice
- True/False
Complexity
This slider field is used to help shape the reading level of the generated text. The further to the right of the scale, the more complex and technical will be the language. The extreme left is meant to be early primary school, the extreme right, PhD thesis level. Experiment with this to see how it applies to your discipline. Remember that there is no point writing a description whose language is so complex that your students can’t understand it!
Number of Questions
Use the slider to indicate how many questions you want the tool to generate for you.
Note that you don’t need to accept all the suggested questions to add to your bank. You can also repeat the process to generate different banks (perhaps one of easier questions and one of very difficult ones), and then combine these later in a test.
Generate
Use the Generate button to apply your changes
Selecting the questions to use
When you are happy with the output, use the checkboxes to the left of each suggested question to identify which ones you want to add to the new Question Bank.
Click the black Add to Question Bank button to proceed. Each time you use this tool a new Question Bank is created.
At this point you might be surprised to be returned to the Document. A pop message appears which gives access to the Question Bank. (If you dismiss this, you can access them later via the Question banks link on the Course Content page).
If you select the link Go to Bank you are taken to the Question Bank canvas:
We suggest that you edit the Title of the question bank (to make it more memorable) and supply a Description if you plan to create tests using multiple question banks.
You can now edit individual questions and change the default points, using the standard editing controls:
Check test questions carefully. Pay particular attention to any distractors and ensure they are fair and offer a suitable degree of challenge.
Acknowledging AI use
When the tools were approved at Education Committee a student rep suggested that staff should acknowledge their use in the course, just as we ask students to acknowledge the use of generative AI in their assignments. This was seen as good practice and the recommendation approved.
Our AI Design Assistant: Acknowledging Use page provides some suggestions.