Pools are a powerful way to create quizzing experiences for your students, and are the preferred method used by most instructors. This guide is broken into four sections:
Introducing Pools
Creating a Pool
Adding Pools to a Quiz
Choosing Pool Sizes and Rebalancing
1. Introducing Pools
A Pool is a collection of questions selected at random from within a single Question Bank. When creating a pool, you set how many questions you want pulled at random from the bank and shown to students during a quiz.
Pools allow randomization of questions from a bank to be added into a quiz, so students taking the same quiz may receive different questions from the same bank. Every student receives an equivalent — but not identical — quiz. This is also how the pre-built quizzes and exams that come with Blended Teaching textbooks are constructed.
You can:
Pull as many questions as you want from a specific bank.
Add as many Pools as you want to a single quiz.
2. Creating a Pool
There are two ways to create a pool: from the Question Bank itself, or directly while building a quiz. Both get you to the same place — use whichever fits how you're working.
2.1. From the Question Banks page
To add questions from a bank into a pool:
Go to the Quizzes page in the Control Center.
Select Question Banks at the top.
Search for and select the bank you want.
Open the Question Pools tab and click + Create Pool.
Enter a name, select how many questions should be included in the pool, or click Select all questions from bank.
Your pool is now ready to use in quizzes.
2.2. While building a quiz
You can also create a pool without leaving the quiz you're working on:
From the quiz Build page, select Add from Question Bank.
Choose Blended Banks and search for the relevant Question Bank.
Select Pools, then click + New Pool.
Name it, choose how many questions it should draw, and click + to add it straight into your quiz.
3. Adding Pools to a Quiz
You can add multiple pools to a quiz. This is especially useful if you want to build a quiz that covers multiple chapters, such as a Mid-term Exam or an End-of-Module quiz.
To add an existing Pool into a quiz:
From the quiz Build page, click Add from Question Bank.
Search for the Question Bank where you created your pool.
Click the Pools button.
Find the pool you want and click the blue + button.
Your pool is now added to the quiz.
4. Choosing Pool Sizes and Rebalancing
When a quiz draws from several pools, decide the total number of questions you want the quiz to contain, then divide that across your pools. For example, a 40-question exam drawing from 4 chapter pools works out to 10 questions per pool.
To change how many questions a pool draws: on the quiz Build page, click the three dots next to the pool → Edit → update Questions to Select → Update Pool.
Good to know: adjusting a pool's size only affects future quiz attempts. Students who have already completed the quiz are not impacted, so it's safe to rebalance mid-semester.
If you've reordered, added, or removed course content and need your quizzes and exams to match, How to Update Exams After Reordering or Changing Course Modules walks through the full workflow — removing pools, adding pools, and rebalancing — step by step.
Related Guides
A Guide to Question Banks — what banks are and how to find them.
Searching for Questions & Question Banks — find the right bank or question fast.
A Guide to Uploading Your Own Questions — bring in questions from Word, PDF, or your LMS.
How to Update Exams After Reordering or Changing Course Modules — keep assessments in sync with content changes.
Questions about pools? Ask Blended AI in your Control Center — it can walk you through any of these steps.