Question Bank Review

First, a distinction: this article is not a book review for students, nor a set of worked solutions. It looks at question bank review from the perspective of the publishers and authors who produce question banks: reviewing questions against the criteria of Türkiye's Ministry of National Education (MEB) and checking their design. With an amendment published in the Official Gazette (Resmî Gazete), the review criteria under the Türkiye Century Maarif Model went from 5 to 8.

The criteria have changed. So who checks them in your question bank, and when?

Review is more than reading a single question. It is a two-layer chain of responsibility made up of content and design. By the end of this article, you will have a role matrix and a design checklist.

What Is Question Bank Review and Why Does It Have Two Layers?

Question bank review is the process of checking every question in a book against the 8 review criteria in the Regulation on Textbooks and Educational Materials (Ders Kitapları ve Eğitim Araçları Yönetmeliği). Design checks at the level of the page, the visuals and the typesetting are part of the job too. The process is run by the publisher's team of authors, editors, language specialists and design specialists.

It helps to think of the criteria in two layers. The first six criteria form the content layer: legislation, scientific adequacy, alignment with the curriculum, integrated structure, assessment and evaluation, and language and expression. The last two, visual and content design and electronic content, belong to the design layer.

Dismissing design as a cosmetic detail? That is an easy but misleading shortcut. If the value in the graph needed for the solution cannot be read, the question cannot measure the skill it is meant to measure; it is that simple. The Maarif Model's emphasis on skill-based questions and learning outcomes tightens this link even further. The review criteria of the Board of Education (Talim ve Terbiye Kurulu) are the reference standard for credibility in the market for reviewing supplementary resources. That holds even though question banks are not always subject to Board approval.

Who Owns the Question Bank Review Criteria? A Role Matrix for MEB's 8 Criteria

The team named in the definition has its counterpart in the regulation as well. Alongside the subject author, the MEB regulation calls for at least one editor, one language specialist (with a bachelor's degree in Turkish or Turkish Language and Literature) and one visual design specialist. The table below is a suggested mapping that assigns the MEB review criteria to these roles; it should not be read as a mandatory scheme.

Where the Matrix Intersects: Criterion 5 and Criterion 7

Why these two in particular? Because neither can be left to a single role. The author builds the right distractor; so far, so good. But as we often see in practice, if the order of the options changes during typesetting or a visual is redrawn, compliance with the assessment and evaluation criterion breaks down at the design desk. That is why mutual approval, a joint sign-off by the author and the designer, is recommended for criteria 5 and 7. This is where it is clearest why the two layers carry equal weight.

How to Apply the Matrix in a Small Team

A common scenario in the field: in a small team, the same person takes on several roles at once. In that case, you need to stick firmly to one principle: the four-eyes rule. No one should be the primary checker of their own work; another subject teacher should read the author-editor's questions. Besides employing specialists, the regulation also recognizes obtaining their services from outside providers. That makes sourcing language and design support externally a legitimate option too.

Question Bank Design Check: 7 Errors Where Content and Design Meet

Whether design support comes from inside the team or outside, the errors below are born in the same place: at the design desk. Yet the criteria they violate are on the content side.

Why Is Shared Stem Integrity the First Rule of Design?

A shared stem is the text or visual that more than one question relies on. Keeping it intact is counted among the core requirements in reviewing supplementary resources.

What happens if the stem is on one page and its questions on the next? The student has to turn pages to solve them. That is a burden unrelated to the skill being measured, and it undermines criteria 5 and 7 at once. The risk grows with skill-based, new-generation questions with long stems. The rule for checking shared stems in a question bank is simple: the stem and its questions should stay on the same page or on a facing-page spread.

A 7-Point Checklist to Apply After Typesetting

The shared-stem rule is the first item on the list. The other items carry the same logic to the rest of the page. You can tick off the questions one by one on the typeset pages; the numbers in parentheses show the MEB criteria that an error breaks.

1. Are the shared stem and its questions in the same field of view in the page layout, so the student sees them at a glance? (7, 5)
2. Do the question numbers and the answer key still match one to one after typesetting changes and page shifts? (5)
3. Is the graph, table or map that is critical to the solution still legible at actual print size in the visual design? (7, 2)
4. Are the values, labels and units in the visual fully consistent with the information in the question text and the options? (2, 7)
5. In long-stem questions, are the options split at the end of a page or column, and is the option layout consistent throughout the book? (7, 6)
6. In the content design, are visual density, font size and line spacing suited to the developmental stage of students in the target grade? (7, 3)
7. Do the QR codes and electronic content links work, and does each link really lead to the relevant question or solution? (8)

At Which Stage Should Errors Be Caught? Three Checkpoints in Question Bank Quality Control

The role matrix showed who checks, and the checklist showed what gets checked. That leaves the "when" question from the introduction. A well-built question bank check aims to catch every error at the stage where it arises.

1. Writing stage: The subject author and the editor check criteria 1–5. Scientific accuracy, alignment with learning objectives and distractor quality are settled at this checkpoint.
2. Copyediting and proofreading: The language specialist checks criterion 6, language and expression.
3. Final PDF after typesetting: The visual design specialist and the editor review criteria 7–8. The 7-point checklist above is applied at this checkpoint.

Content errors are caught earliest and design errors latest. That is the general rule; still, from our experience with editorial processes, it is important not to overlook that typesetting can introduce content errors too. That is why running the second item on the list, the answer key match, once more at the final checkpoint is essential.

So should questions be checked by hand or with software? When hundreds of questions have to be scanned against the same criteria and kept on record, publishers use question bank review software that produces a question-by-question review report from the PDF. The details of the workflow are in our guide to software-assisted review.

With these three checkpoints, the question from the introduction finds its answer as well: question bank review is a chain of responsibility in which the content and design layers are distributed across specific roles and stages. You now have the two tools you need to build that chain: the role matrix and the 7-point design checklist. Before starting the next book, take the matrix to your team meeting and write down the primary owner for each criterion. Brushing the issue aside with "design is just a detail" puts at risk not a small detail but compliance with criteria 5 and 7.

Share the role matrix and the design checklist with your team; if you would like to try the 8-criterion, question-by-question report on your own book, take a look at the free demo account. The demo account requires no payment; for 30 days, you can use it on 2 books, with question detection on 20 pages per book and Cross-Check for 10 questions.