Selecting and adding Problems

Selecting problems from the PA database is easy, with your document open, start by clicking the "Select" tab on the left side of the page.

Drilling down into a bank for questions

Choose a question bank by selecting it from the panels (i.e. NY Regents Exams panel, Science). Use tabs to narrow your search by topic or assessment type, and the links to choose a knowledge area.

1. Choose a question bank by selecting it from the panels. (i.e. NY Regents Exams panel, Mathematics)

2. Use the Tabs and Subheadings to to narrow your search by topic or assessment type. The tabbed classifications will vary according to the question bank’s origin.

3. Click a title to open a knowledge area.

Collapse or expand Topics

Using the + and – buttons to collapse or expand groups for easier navigation.

Moving back up levels

Click the back button to go back up a level and browse to another group or bank.

Adding Problems

Once you’ve chosen a group, you’ll see a list of problems. Click the Add button at the bottom of the question thumbnail to add a problem to your document.

Subscribers can also use the Add, button in the Document Toolbar to add all the problems in a category at once, or a certain number at random.

Question Thumbnails

Several actions are available from the question thumbnails

1. Subscribers  will see an  Edit  button that allows questions to be modified.

2. Add  this question to your document.

3. Get  Information  about this question and a link to related questions from the same source.

1. Flag  this question to report an error.

2. Questions that involve a reading assignment feature a  Passage  button that opens a PDF that you can view, print or save.

Advanced Selection Options

Additional selection options are available to subscribers. You can learn about them here or try them in the Play Area.

1. Most question banks in Problem-Attic are organized by difficulty or date. These can be sorted differently when you are on the selection pages. For more details, see online help for Sorting.

2. With the Add button, you can select all problems in a category at once, or a certain number at random. See the below section for more information.

3. With the Filter button, you can hide/show problems based on different criteria, including type (multiple-choice vs. free-response) and whether problems have been used in another document. For more details, see online help for Filtering Problems.

Adding Several Problems at Once

The Add button near the top of the page allows you to add multiple problems at once, instead of one at a time. It is available when you have selected a particular topic/objective and you are looking at problem thumbnails.

Use the radio buttons to add all problems for a topic/objective, or add a certain number of problems at random. (The “all” option is available to subscribers.) Please note that the Add button respects your filter options; it will ignore any problems which you’ve asked not to be shown. Learn more about the Filter here

Click “Accept” to add the problems to your document. The number of problems added are noted at the top of the screen.

WARNING: The “all problems” option adds all of the problems in the selected category, including any not shown on the page. Most question banks contain more problems than are practical for one document. There is currently no undo feature for the Add button.