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Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS)

Importing Questions from a Publisher

Why Do This?

Many publishers provide quiz questions in formats that can be uploaded directly to your course Question Bank in Cougar Courses.

File Formats

Acceptable formats include Moodle, Desire2Learn, and Blackboard.

If your publisher only provides questions in Word format, then unfortunately you cannot upload directly to your course. Instead you will need to format your Word doc(s) and use the software Respondus in CougarApps to get the questions into your Question Bank. Please see our help guide on how to import questions using Respondus.

If your publisher provides the questions as an IMSCC file type, then you will actually use the Restore function to import. Follow this help guide on how to Restore content into your course.

Download and Unzip

First, download the package/folder from your publisher. Most likely it will be a zipped file that contains zipped files for each chapter. You will need to unzip the main zipped file, but not the individual zipped chapter files.

folder with zipped chapter files

To unzip a file on a PC, please see this Microsoft guide (opens in a new tab).

To unzip a file on a Mac, please see this Apple quide (opens in a new tab).

If you unzip the file and it does not contain a zipped file for each chapter then you will upload the just the main zipped file.

Upload to your Question Bank

  1. From your course homepage click the gear icon in the upper right to open the Course Administration. Then select Question Bank.

 Question Bank link in Course Admin

  1. Click the Import tab at the top.

 Import tab

  1. Choose the appropriate format. For example, if the publisher provided the package in a Moodle format, choose Moodle XML format. If the publisher provided a Blackboard format, choose Blackboard. If the publisher provided a Web CT or Desire2Learn format use the WebCT format.

 File Format options

  1. Leave the defaults for the other settings and under Import upload the zip file for the first chapter.

 Upload file to the Import box

  1. Click Import at the bottom.

 import button

  1. If the file cannot be imported, you will see an error message. For example, here are two possible error messages you might see:

 error message under the Import box

 error messages

If there is an error and the questions are not imported, don’t worry just yet! It just means we need to try a different format. Under File Format choose a different format. For example, if you have a Moodle package but selecting Moodle XML format did not work, try Blackboard or WebCT format. The formats you should try are: Blackboard, Moodle XML format, and WebCT format. You can ignore the other formats. If none of the three formats work, check to see if your publisher provides a different format package to try. For example, if their Moodle package did not work but they also provide a Blackboard package, download the Blackboard package, unzip, and try the above steps again.

  1. If the questions successfully import, it will say "Parsing question from immport file" and "Importing [#] questions from file" in green and then list the questions imported.

 import success messages

  1. Scroll to the bottom and click Continue.
    Continue button
  2. Repeat steps 2-8 for each chapter you wish to import.

Set up the actual quiz in Cougar Courses.

Now that you have the questions in the question bank in your course, the next steps are to set up the quiz. Check out these help guides for more information:
• Set up a Quiz
• Adding Questions from the Question Bank