Groups Disappearing from Question Bank

AnaGongora1984

Hello, dear all! 😊

I wonder if you could help me with a situation I'm having with one of my courses: suddenly, groups of questions disappear from the Question Bank, which makes it impossible for students to access the test.

When students try to access the test that's been affected, they see an error message, "There is a problem with this assessment, Please contact your instructor."

As an instructor, I access the quiz to revise the situation, just to be welcomed with another error message ("Invalid Items. Students will not be able to take this assessment until they are resolved", followed by the numbers of questions affected):

As I scroll down to the questions affected, there is yet another error message: "Item bank no longer exists!"

When I go to the Question Bank Manager, I can confirm that those question groups no longer exist.

I have revised the Deleted page to check whether there is any activity log, with no luck.

I would like to understand why these questions continue disappearing suddenly, without any interference, and how I can back up these questions or prevent the surviving ones from the same ill fate. It has only happened to this course and all the replicas of this course. It is actually frustrating, since reconstructing these questions has been futile.

I would really appreciate your enlightenment on this situation.

Thank you very much! 😊

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JeffCampbell

That is concerning. Just to clarify first. Are these banks you created or are these banks that someone else created and you used?

AnaGongora1984

Thank you very much for your reply, Jeff! 😊

These were banks I created. The situation has affected three of the quizzes I've designed, so far.

Thank you for your message! 😃

JeffCampbell

Hmmm…are they copied over or linked to a bank created in an older course? If yes, I'm wondering if your institution only keeps courses for so long and that could be why it stopped working.

Am I reading this correctly that you have created new banks/questions since first seeing this and even those are not working?

jeremyfw

Hi @AnaGongora1984

This pattern usually comes from ownership + copy/link behavior + lifecycle/permissions, not from questions “randomly vanishing.” The clue is the exact message: “Item bank no longer exists!” That means the quiz is holding a reference to an item bank ID that Canvas can’t resolve anymore.

Here are the most common, realistic causes - ranked by likelihood.

1) The quiz is linked to banks that actually live somewhere else (course copy quirks)

In New Quizzes, item banks don’t always behave like “content inside a course.” Depending on how the quiz was built/copied, the quiz may be linking to an external bank (often a bank associated with a different course, user, or account-level location) rather than creating a fully local copy.

So when you copy/replicate the course, you might be copying a quiz that still points to the original bank, not a new bank in the new course. If that original bank is later deleted/moved/unshared, every copied quiz breaks.

Why it matches your symptoms

Happens in “this course and all replicas”
Multiple quizzes affected over time
Error points to missing bank object, not missing questions

2) Course lifecycle / retention policy removed the “source” course or its banks

@JeffCampbell's suspicion is a good one. If your institution concludes old courses (or deletes them after a term), and your quizzes were still referencing banks tied to an older course context, then once that course is deleted, the banks become unavailable, causing “bank no longer exists.”

Even if you “created” the banks, you might have created them originally in a different course shell that later got cleaned up.

Tell-tale sign

Issue appears after a term rollover, archival, or SIS course cleanup
Only affects replicas tied back to the same source

3) Bank ownership/permissions changed (especially with co-teachers)

Item banks have an “owner” and sharing model. If:

the bank was shared to the course,
the owner changed roles,
the owner account was deactivated,
a blueprint sync altered associations,
or an admin did a cleanup/migration…

… then a bank can effectively “disappear” from the perspective of the course, even if it still exists elsewhere.

Tell-tale sign

Banks missing in the bank manager
No record in “Deleted” (because it wasn’t deleted in that course context)

What to do right now (to stop the bleeding)

At this point, the priority is to break the hidden dependency between quizzes and fragile item bank references and to make sure you have a recoverable source of truth.

A) Rebuild banks inside a controlled source of truth

Recreating banks directly inside the affected course can work in the short term, but it doesn’t actually solve the underlying risk. If the banks are still living inside Canvas’s New Quizzes LTI layer, they remain vulnerable to the same copy, ownership, and lifecycle issues.

This is where using an external question-bank manager, such as Canvas Question Bank Platform, is especially relevant for your situation.

Why this helps:

Questions live outside any single Canvas course
Banks are not tied to course retention, term rollover, or ownership changes
Canvas becomes a delivery target, not the system of record

In other words, even if Canvas loses a bank reference again, you can regenerate the quiz instead of reconstructing it from memory.

B) Export a real backup (not just “hope Canvas keeps it”)

Canvas does not currently provide a reliable, instructor-visible backup mechanism for New Quiz item banks.

Using a platform like Canvas Question Bank Platform allows you to:

Import existing Canvas quizzes or item banks
Store them in a neutral format
Re-export as:
- QTI back into Canvas
- Fresh item banks into a new course
- Practice/review materials (Quizlet, Quizizz/Wayground, Kahoot, etc.)

This gives you an actual recovery path when something disappears, instead of starting over.

C) Ask your Canvas admin to verify the root cause (with evidence)

While rebuilding, have your Canvas admin check:

Course lifecycle / deletion policy (are older courses truly deleted, not just concluded?)
Item bank ownership and location (where those missing banks originally lived)
Blueprint or bulk-copy behavior (linked vs duplicated banks)

If you can show that the same banks were:

created once,
copied across multiple courses,
and then vanished everywhere,

that strongly supports the “external reference invalidated” explanation - and helps prevent it from happening again.

Why an external bank matters specifically for this problem

What you’re experiencing isn’t a one-off bug; it’s a structural risk of New Quizzes:

Item banks are LTI objects that can outlive, or disappear with, the course contexts they were created in.

A tool like Canvas Question Bank Platform sidesteps that risk by:

Decoupling authoring from delivery
Making Canvas one of several export targets, not the only home
Letting you recover quickly when Canvas references break

That doesn’t just “back things up, ”it changes the failure mode from “irreversible loss” to “re-publish and move on.”

AnaGongora1984

Hello, dear Jeremy! 😀

Thank you very much for your very comprehensive answer! 🤗

I'd created the groups and questions from the parent course, which is never discontinued. The aspect I'll have to check is whether the change of roles and ownership is what might be affecting these questions groups.

I also appreciate your information about the Canvas Question Bank Platform, which also sounds like a lifesaver to solve this issue. I'll revise all the details about this alternative to share them with the administrators and start implementing it as soon as possible.

Dear @JeffCampbell and @jeremyfw, 🤗 I send you all my gratitude and my best wishes! Thank you for your support and time!

I send you all my best wishes and, once more, thank you for your fabulous assistance!

AnaGongora1984

Thank you for your reply again, Jeff! 🤗

The banks have been created from the parent course, which hasn't been discontinued or eliminated. Whenever the bank disconnects in the parent course, of course it immediately affects tests in the child courses, too.

It never happened during the first semester, even though my role had changed from "designer" to "revisor" and "tutor".

I wonder if it's the change of roles I've had (instructor, revisor, designer) that has affected ownership and, therefore, the link to the banks. So far, it is the only aspect that has changed since the course was created and the tests were designed.

Dear Jeff, thank you very much for your priceless support! 😊

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