ShareStats

TLC-FMG Lunch Seminar

21 April 2026

Welcome

About this seminar

Lunch Seminar — ShareStats

This session covers:

  1. 📚 What ShareStats is and why it exists
  2. 🔍 How to search and upload items to ANS
  3. 💻 Hands-on practice — your turn!

Tip

This is a hands-on workshop — please have your laptop ready.

Find this presentation here

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Introduction to ShareStats

What is ShareStats?

ShareStats is an open-source item bank for statistics education.

Goals

  • Lower the barrier to writing good statistics exams
  • Promote reuse of high-quality questions
  • Support both formative and summative assessment

Key features

  • Freely available questions (open licence)
  • Items in multiple formats
  • Compatible with ANS/Canvas platforms
  • Powered by the R exams package

Why an item bank?

Writing good statistics questions is time-consuming.

ShareStats helps educators with question creation.

  • Peer-reviewed items written by statistics educators
  • Covers common introductory statistics topics
  • Items are tagged by topic taxonomy, and format

What’s in the bank?

Topics covered include:

Category Example
Measurement level Nominal vs ordinal vs interval (e.g., survey gender = nominal)
Inferential statistics Two-sample t-test to compare group means
Probability Compute P(X ≤ 2) for X ~ Poisson(λ=1.5)
Assumptions Check normality of residuals in linear regression
Descriptive statistics Mean, median, and standard deviation of scores
Variable type Continuous (age), discrete (count), categorical (gender)
Distributions Normal, binomial, Poisson (e.g., heights ≈ Normal)
Factor analysis Exploratory factor analysis on questionnaire items
Reliability Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency

Item formats

ShareStats items are written in R/exams format, supporting:

  • Single-choice (schoice)
  • Multiple-choice (mchoice)
  • Numeric answer (num)
  • Open answer (string)
  • Cloze (combination of the above)

Searching & Uploading

Finding items on ShareStats

  1. Go to sharestats.nl
  2. Browse by taxonomy or use the search function
  3. Preview the item — question text, answer options, solution
  4. Download the ANS or canvas package or the raw R Markdown zip file.

How to search: Sharestats instructions

Downloading packages for ANS/Canvas

For direct use of individual itemsin ANS or Canvas, download the pre-compiled packages:

Downloading items for R exams

The raw R Markdown files are available for download as a .zip file. This allows you to:

  • Collect multiple items
  • Edit or customize items in R/exams format
  • Compile your own packages for ANS or Canvas

Instructions on how to use R exams to compile packages: ShareStats R exams instructions

Uploading to ANS

To get to the correct upload location in Ans, follow these steps:

  1. Log into your item bank within Ans.
  2. Select the Settings/Instellingen option.
  3. Choose QTI… upload from the menu.
  4. Select the file you wish to upload (such as a QTI file downloaded from ShareStats) from your computer.
  5. View the imported item.

Uploading to Canvas

To upload ShareStats items into Canvas, you can use one of the two following methods depending on the type of quiz you are using:

Method 1: For Classic Quizzes

  1. Go to the Import existing content section in your Canvas course.
  2. Select QTI zip file as the content type.
  3. Browse your computer to select the file you downloaded from ShareStats.
  4. Select an existing item bank or create a new one to house the question.
  5. Click to add the file to the import queue to complete the process.

Method 2: For New Quizzes

  1. Create and save a New Quiz within your course.
  2. Enter the new quiz editor.
  3. Click the Import content option.
  4. Browse your computer, select the ShareStats item, and click Import.

Hands-On Practice

Your turn!

Let’s try it together

Exercise 1 — Browse & Pick

  1. Open sharestats.nl on your laptop
  2. Find two items on a topic relevant to your course
  3. Download the ANS or canvas packages to a local folder

Exercise 2 — Compile a Mini Exam

Download the zip folder for 3 other items.

Follow the instructions for using R/exams to create a QTI package: ShareStats R exams instructions

Exercise 3 — Upload to ANS or Canvas

Follow the instructions for uploading Section 3.5 to get your items into your LMS.

Wrap-up

Summary

  • ShareStats is a free, open-source item bank for statistics education
  • Items are written in R/exams format — randomisable and reusable
  • Export to QTI for direct use in ANS and Canvas
  • The community grows when you contribute items back!

Get involved

Use ShareStats

Contribute

  • Write items in R/exams format
  • Submit a pull request
  • Report issues or suggestions

R exams resources

Thank you!

Questions?

sharestats.nl · r-exams.org · LinkedIn