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Import Questions into Blackboard Ultra, Test Banks and Question Pools From Any Video

Every route into a Blackboard test, what each one accepts, and how to get a question set out of a video and into Ultra or Original without typing it.

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What VidQuiz reads: paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz watches the video itself. For any other source (Vimeo, an MP4, a screen recording, an upload) paste that video’s transcript and VidQuiz writes the questions from it.

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The short answer

Last updated August 2026

To import questions into Blackboard, export them as a tab delimited .txt and use Upload Questions inside a test. In the Ultra Course View, open the test, select the plus sign, and choose Upload questions from file. In the Original Course View, go to Tests, Surveys, and Pools and use Upload Questions there. This is the only import route Blackboard supports in both course views: its QTI package importer is documented for QTI 2.1 and for the Original Course View only. VidQuiz writes that tab delimited file directly from a video, so the questions exist before you open the test canvas.

There are more ways into a Blackboard test than the interface suggests, and they do not have the same reach. Some work only in the Original Course View. One of them, the one most guides recommend, quietly does not work in Ultra at all. Instructors usually find this out after exporting a file, uploading it, and reading an error that does not say which of the two problems they have.

This page lays out every route into a Blackboard test and what each actually accepts, including the two routes that do not exist at all and that people waste an afternoon looking for. The short version: the tab delimited question upload is the one that works everywhere, and QTI is the one to avoid unless you are certain of both your course view and your QTI version.

VidQuiz covers the writing half. Paste a YouTube link to a recorded lecture, a Blackboard Collaborate session, a course module or a training video and it reads the spoken content itself; for a recording held anywhere else, upload it with its transcript. From either it drafts multiple choice questions with the correct answer marked, then exports the tab delimited file Blackboard uploads. The questions come from your own recording, every one is editable before export, and there is no accuracy guarantee, so read the set once before it counts toward a grade.

At a glance

Every route into a Blackboard test and what it accepts

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Route into Blackboard	Which course view	What it accepts
Upload Questions, from a file	Original and Ultra	Tab delimited .txt. MC, MA, TF, ESS, FIB, FIB_PLUS, MAT and NUM. No feedback column
QTI package import	Original Course View only	QTI 2.1 packages per Anthology. Not available in Ultra
Copy content between courses	Original and Ultra	Anything already inside Blackboard. Original pools become Ultra question banks on conversion
Publisher or third party package	Original and Ultra	Cartridges built in Blackboard Original or Ultra format by the publisher
AI Design Assistant	Ultra Course View	Generates a question bank from course content already uploaded, not from your own video
Typing into the test canvas	Original and Ultra	Everything, at roughly an afternoon per twenty questions
A CSV of questions	Neither	Nothing. Blackboard has no native CSV question importer
A Word document of questions	Neither	Nothing. Blackboard has no native Word question importer

Checked against Anthology instructor documentation in August 2026. The last two rows are the ones worth reading twice: a spreadsheet or a Word file of questions has no native route into Blackboard, which is why the tab delimited upload exists.

How do I import questions into Blackboard Ultra?

Open the test in your Ultra course, select the plus sign where you would add a question, and choose the option to upload questions from a file. Browse to a tab delimited .txt and submit. Blackboard reads each row as a question and drops the items straight into the test, where you can edit, reorder and point them like anything you typed yourself.

This is worth knowing precisely because the more widely repeated advice, export QTI and import it, does not apply to Ultra. Anthology documents QTI import for the Original Course View, so in an Ultra course the QTI screen is not there to find. The file upload is the supported path, not a workaround.

How do I import a test bank into Blackboard?

It depends on where the test bank is coming from, and that is the distinction that decides everything. If it is a publisher test bank, it will usually arrive as a Blackboard formatted cartridge, and you import it as course content rather than as questions. If it is a bank from another Blackboard course, copy the content between courses and the questions come with it.

If it is a bank you are building yourself, from a recorded lecture or a set of training videos, generate the questions first and upload the tab delimited file into a test. In the Ultra Course View you can then move those questions into a question bank for reuse; in Original the equivalent container is a question pool.

Does Blackboard Ultra support QTI import?

No, and the version numbers make this messier than it needs to be. Anthology documents QTI import and export in the Original Course View, and the importer it documents is for QTI 2.1 packages. Meanwhile most generators write QTI 1.2, because 1.2 is what Canvas and D2L Brightspace read most reliably. So a QTI file aimed at Blackboard can fail for two independent reasons: wrong course view, wrong version.

VidQuiz writes QTI 1.2 for Canvas, Brightspace and Sakai, and writes the tab delimited file for Blackboard. That is a deliberate split rather than a gap. There is no single file every LMS reads, and pretending otherwise is how instructors end up troubleshooting an import that was never going to work.

How do I upload questions into Blackboard from a file?

The file is a tab delimited .txt with one question per row. The first field is a type code, the second is the question text, and what follows depends on the type. For multiple choice, each option is followed by the literal word correct or incorrect. For true or false, the single field after the question is true or false.

Three rules break these files when they are written by hand. There can be no header row, no blank lines between questions, and the marker words have to be in English whatever language the course runs in. Anthology also recommends keeping a batch under 250 questions to avoid a browser timeout. Exporting the file instead of typing it removes all four concerns, because tab characters and line breaks inside a question stem are flattened before the row is written, which is the failure that silently shifts every later column.

What is the difference between a question pool and a question bank in Blackboard?

In the Original Course View, a question pool is the container questions live in for reuse across tests. In the Ultra Course View, that container is called a question bank. When a course is converted from Original to Ultra, existing pools become question banks, and unsupported question types are dropped on the way.

The confusion is that Ultra also uses the word pool for something else entirely: a setting inside a test that pulls a random subset from a bank, which Original called a random block or question set. So a pool in Original is a place questions live, while a pool in Ultra is a rule about how many of them a student sees. Two different things, one word.

Can I import questions into Blackboard from Word or Excel?

Not directly, and this is the single most common wasted afternoon in Blackboard. There is no native Word importer and no native CSV importer for questions. A .docx of nicely formatted questions and a spreadsheet with neat columns both have to be converted into the tab delimited layout before Blackboard will read them.

You can build that file in Excel and save it as tab delimited text, which is the manual route many campus teaching centres document. It works, and it is tedious, and one stray tab inside a question stem breaks a row without any error telling you which one. If your source is a video rather than a document, generating the file directly skips the conversion step entirely.

Which question types does the upload support?

Blackboard reads eight type codes from the upload file: MC for multiple choice, MA for multiple answer, TF for true or false, ESS for essay, FIB for fill in the blank, FIB_PLUS for fill in multiple blanks, MAT for matching and NUM for numeric response. A generated video quiz is mostly MC with the occasional TF, so those are the two VidQuiz writes, plus ESS where a question has no options to choose between.

What the format cannot carry is feedback. There is no column for it, so the one line explanation on each question and the timestamp pointing back at the moment in the video both stay in VidQuiz. The PDF export keeps the explanations if you want them as an answer key for yourself, and the ones worth showing students can be pasted in after the upload.

What this page does not help with

A large share of people searching for a way to import questions into Blackboard already have the questions, sitting in a Word file, a publisher CSV or an old Respondus export, and want them transcoded. VidQuiz does not do that. It reads video and audio and writes questions from spoken content. It is not a document converter.

If that is your situation, the honest pointers are your campus teaching and learning centre, which often runs an in house converter for exactly this, or the Excel to tab delimited route described above. Respondus remains the commercial tool most US institutions license for bulk Blackboard question conversion. Sending you to the right tool is more useful than pretending this one fits.

What you get with import questions into blackboard

The route that works in both views

The tab delimited upload is accepted in the Ultra Course View and the Original Course View alike. QTI import is Original only, and wants a version most tools do not write, which is why so much Blackboard import advice fails halfway through.

The questions are already written

Paste a lecture or training video and the multiple choice items come back drafted, with the correct option marked. The Blackboard test canvas stops being an empty pool you fill by hand and becomes a set you review.

Honest about what does not travel

Blackboard's upload format has no feedback column, so explanations and timestamps stay in VidQuiz rather than arriving in Blackboard. Better to know that now than after you have planned a workflow around it.

What you can do

Everything import questions into blackboard gives you

Paste a YouTube link and VidQuiz reads the video itself; for anything else, upload it with its transcript. Either way it writes the questions and you edit anything before you share. You stay in control of the final quiz.

Import questions into a Blackboard Ultra test from a file
Upload a question set into an Original Course View pool
Skip the QTI version problem entirely
Build a test bank from a recorded lecture
Reuse the same video for a Canvas or Brightspace export
Review and edit every question before it reaches Blackboard

Quiz Studio

Try it on a video right here

Pick a sample or paste your own link, generate the quiz, then answer the questions. Each one is tied to a moment in the video, with the answer and a short explanation.

Sample quiz

Real output, not generated live

Good questions

Questions about import questions into blackboard

A tab delimited .txt uploaded through Upload Questions, which works in both course views. Blackboard also has a QTI package importer, but Anthology documents it for QTI 2.1 and for the Original Course View only, so the upload file is the more dependable route.

Yes. Open the test, select the plus sign, choose to upload questions from a file, and submit a tab delimited .txt. There is no copying between an Original course and an Ultra one, because the upload is supported in Ultra directly. QTI import is not.

Anthology recommends keeping each batch under 250 questions, because larger files can hit browser timeouts during processing. A quiz generated from a single lecture will be nowhere near that, so in practice it is not a limit you will meet.

No. Blackboard's tab delimited format has no feedback column, so explanations and timestamps stay in VidQuiz. Export the PDF if you want the explanations as your own answer key, or paste the ones that matter into Blackboard after the upload.

No. VidQuiz generates questions from video and audio, not from documents. For converting a question file you already have, use your campus teaching and learning centre converter, a tool like Respondus, or save a spreadsheet as tab delimited text yourself.

Yes, through a different export. Canvas and D2L Brightspace read the QTI 1.2 package, which lands in a question bank or the Question Library. Generate the questions once from your video, then export whichever file the platform in front of you actually reads.

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Every route into a Blackboard test, what each one accepts, and how to get a question set out of a video and into Ultra or Original without typing it. Make your first quiz in seconds.