Creating a Pool

This guide will walk you through the process of creating a pool in your Blackboard course. The pool Manager allows Instructors to store questions for repeated use. You can create new questions to include in pools and add questions that have been created in other tests or pools. Pools are course-specific although pools from other courses can be imported through the pool Manager.

>> Note: When creating question Pools for Pools, Instructors must add correct answers, as if they were creating Test questions. These answers will be ignored once the question is copied into a Pool.

Step 1: Click on the Control Panel link and choose the Pool Manager.

Step 2: Click on the Add Pool button.

Step 3: In the Name text box, enter the name of the category of questions that you will create. Naming conventions are useful to narrow the search when later adding a question from a pool for an assessment. In the text box directly underneath the name text box, enter a description of helpful reminders of what the questions pertain to.

Step 4: Enter instructions into the instructions text box and then hit Submit.

>> Note: There is a difference between Smart Text, Plain Text, and HTML. Smart Text automatically recognizes a link entered in the text box. Smart text recognizes the ENTER key as a paragraph tag and accepts HTML tags as well. Smart Text will also prompt to load images if an image source text is used when adding smart text as part of a content item. Plain Text displays text as written. HTML displays text as coded using HTML tags. We would recommend that you leave it selected as Smart Text.

Setting Options for the Pool:

Step 1: Click on the Creation Settings button, to set the settings of the pool.

Step 2: Click on the desired settings for your pool.

Step 3: Click on the Submit button. This will bring you to a receipt page, to notify you that your creation settings were accepted. Click on the button to continue.

Adding Questions to the Pool:

Step 1: From the drop down box on the Pool Canvas window, choose the type of question that you would like to add. Then click on Go.

>> Note: There are several different types of questions to use to create your pool. Click on the following question types to learn how to use each type. The questions are Multiple Choice , True/False , Multiple Answer , Ordering , Matching , Fill in the Blank , Essay , Random Block , and From a Question Pool.

Step 2: When you are finished creating the questions for the pool, click to close the Pool Canvas page.

Step 3: Click to close the Pool Manager page.