The item bank
Draft, beta, live and retired items — and how you tell which ones earn their place.
- A clear lifecycle from draft to live, with rollbacks when an item misbehaves
- Difficulty and discrimination surfaced once candidates have sat an item
- Answer keys stored apart from the question and never shown in a list
The lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being authored |
| Beta | On forms, gathering response statistics |
| Live | Trusted; drawn into real exam forms |
| Retired | Pulled from use, kept for the record |
An item never jumps from draft to live — it earns its way up, and can be pulled back down when its statistics say so.
Reading the statistics
- Difficulty (p-value) — the proportion who got it right. Very easy (almost everyone passes) or very hard (almost everyone fails) items are flagged.
- Discrimination — how well the item tells strong from weak candidates. A negative value is the loud one: it usually means the item is mis-keyed.
- Thin data — too few responses to trust the numbers yet. Reported, never acted on automatically.
Answer keys are separate, always
The correct option or rubric lives in its own store, apart from the question. This list never reads it, and the exam client is never sent it. The editor is the one place a key is entered — and even there, editing an existing item does not show you the current key.
Frequently asked
What do the item statuses mean?
Draft is being written. Beta is collecting response data. Live is in use on real forms. Retired is pulled but kept for the record. An item can move back — a live item that starts behaving badly can go to beta, and a retired one can be revived to draft. A draft can never jump straight to live.
What are difficulty and discrimination?
Difficulty is the fraction of candidates who answered correctly — very high or very low both warrant a look. Discrimination is how well the item separates strong candidates from weak ones; a negative value usually means the item is mis-keyed. Items with too few responses are flagged as thin data rather than acted on.
Where is the correct answer?
Stored separately, in a table this screen never reads. The list shows the question, its stats and its status — never the key. You enter or change the key in the editor; it goes to the server and is not read back into any list or delivered to the exam client.
Why can't I see the answer when editing an existing item?
Because the key never leaves the server, not even for an author. To change it, re-mark the correct option (or rewrite the rubric); leave it untouched to keep the current key.