How To: Bulk upload questions with CSV files – Podsie

There are 2 ways to add questions to Podsie:

Create them directly through the Podsie website when you’re creating an Assignment.

Bulk upload your questions by using a CSV file. The rest of this guide walks through how to do this.

Step 1: Use the Example Google Sheets Template

To start, open up this Google Sheets Template link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dFh20JedoSBu9Mpl-dGo8QrUB-rRFtrafSlZS_ZEVA4/edit#gid=0

Quick Note: The Google Sheets template is ‘View Only’, but you can make your own copy by clicking on File > Make a Copy:

Once opened, you’ll see that there are 4 tabs for all the Question Types that currently support Bulk Uploading: 1.) Free Response 2.) Short Answer 3.) Multiple Choice 4.) Select All That Apply.

Follow the column headers to fill out each row. Each row represents one question that will be bulk uploaded. Be sure to pay attention to what’s “required” vs “optional”. If you’re new to Podsie, please be sure to learn more about the different Question types on Podsie: Podsie Question Types

All Questions

All questions have the following 2 columns:

Question Text: this is the question that students will answer.

Deeper Learning: You can learn more about what Deeper Learning is here: Add “Explanations” to questions

Free Response

Free Response questions have the following unique column:

Exemplar Answer: this is the Answer that shows up to students after they’ve answered a Free Response question. Then, students will compare their own answer against your exemplar answer before self-assessing their accuracy.

Short Answer

Short Answer questions have the following unique columns:

Acceptable Short Answer(s): in the columns to the right of the Deeper Learning column, you can write out acceptable short answers that your students can submit to get the question correct. Please note that you can put as many acceptable short answers as you’d like. We highly recommend limiting short answers to 1-2 words (3 at most).

Multiple Choice

Multiple Choice questions have the following unique columns:

Correct Multiple Choice: It’s very important that you put the correct multiple choice in this column. By default, Podsie shuffles Multiple Choices when displaying a question to students.

Incorrect Multiple Choice: in the columns to the right of the Correct Multiple Choice column, you can write out as many incorrect multiple choices as you’d like. You must write at least one incorrect multiple choice. We highly recommend having at least 3 answer choices so that the question has the appropriate level of “Desirable” Difficulty.

Select All That Apply

Select All That Apply have the following unique columns:

Correct Options: It’s very important that you reference which option numbers represent correct options in a comma separated list of option numbers. If no answers are correct, leave the field blank. By default, Podsie will shuffle Select All That Apply options when displaying a question to students.

Option #s: in the columns to the right of the Correct Options column, you can write out as many options as you’d like. You must write at least two options. We highly recommend having at least 3 answer choices so that the question has the appropriate level of “Desirable” Difficulty.

Step 2: Download the Google Sheet as a CSV

Once you’ve filled out all the questions that you’d like to bulk upload, download the Sheet as a CSV file. To download the Sheet as a CSV, click on File > Download > “Comma Separated Values (.csv)”:

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Only the CSV format is currently supported! In the past, some teachers have run into issues when they accidentally clicked “Tab Separated Values (.tsv)”.

Step 3: Follow the upload instructions

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To bulk upload, navigate to the ‘My Subject’ section, and then click on the ‘Upload Questions’ button.

First, choose the Question Type that you’d like to bulk upload:

Then, select the correct CSV file:

Finally, review the questions to verify that they are the ones that you’d like to upload. Please review the questions carefully because if you bulk upload several inaccurate questions, then it’ll be quite tedious to clean them up after the upload:

Step 4: View your newly uploaded questions in the ‘Untagged Questions’ section

Once you’ve bulk uploaded your questions, wait a few minutes, and then refresh your page. At this time, you should see the newly uploaded questions in the ‘Questions not tagged to learning standards’ section:

FAQ

I’ve waited more than 5 minutes after bulk uploading questions. Even when I refresh the page, the uploaded questions are not showing up. What should I do? Sorry for the troubles. Please contact hello@podsie.org for support!

Will all collaborators in the Subject Group be able to see these bulk uploaded questions? Yes, bulk uploaded questions are just like all the other questions that you create: anyone collaborator in the Subject Group will also be able to see them and then use them in their own courses.