How to generate exams with random questions using the new library?

Educators
1

Hi,

I’ve been testing the new libraries for creating exams via the question bank.

However, I’ve encountered an issue: I cannot limit the number of attempts per question directly through the library. I’ve only been able to do this via ‘Advanced Settings,’ but there’s a catch—setting it to 2 attempts makes the True/False questions lose their validity (as the answer becomes obvious).

I would appreciate it if you could show me how to create exams using the question bank and these new libraries while successfully setting a specific number of attempts for each question.

2

Hi Ernesto,

Good news - this is solvable without touching Advanced Settings at all. The key is setting attempts per problem inside the Library itself, not at the course level.

The root cause of your issue:

If you set a specific number in the course-wide Maximum Attempts (Advanced Settings), individual problems can no longer be set to unlimited - the course-wide value becomes a hard ceiling for everything. Openedx This is why your True/False questions are being affected - they inherit the global value.

The correct approach:

  1. Keep course-wide Maximum Attempts as null (leave it blank in Advanced Settings). This means unlimited by default - but you’ll override it per problem.

  2. Set attempts directly on each problem inside the Library:

    • Open the problem in your Library

    • On the right sidebar, click “Show advanced settings”

    • Set the Attempts field to your desired number (e.g., 1 for True/False, 2 or 3 for MCQ)

You can define a different Attempts value for each problem - this problem-level setting overrides the course-wide default. Openedx

  1. These per-problem settings carry over when the Library questions are pulled into your course via the Question Bank.

For your True/False questions specifically: Set attempts to 1 on each True/False problem in the library. Since the course-wide setting remains null, your MCQ problems can still have 2–3 attempts independently.

OLX reference (if you use the Advanced Editor):

xml

<problem max_attempts="1" ...>
  <choiceresponse>
    ...
  </choiceresponse>
</problem>

Setting the Attempts value to empty means learners have an unlimited number of attempts Openedx, so only fill it in for problems where you need a specific limit.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you run into issues with the Library v2 interface specifically, as the sidebar UI can differ slightly from course-level problem editing.

3

Hello,

Thanks for the reply, but indeed that option is only enabled when you’re in the design of a section within the course. If you create a library, it doesn’t appear. The tutor version I’m using is 21.0.1

In a librery

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In course design

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