# Writing Quizzes directly to Database from Excel

**URL:** <https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [February 16, 2026, 3:16am UTC](https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961 "2026-02-16T03:16:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![benKTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@benKTF](https://community.learningequality.org/u/benKTF)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 3:16am UTC](https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961/1 "2026-02-16T03:16:46Z")

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I have quiz questions in a spreadsheet and have used Prostgresql before but wonder if anyone has done a build directly to the DB in an install with quizzes? are there any things I might need to factor in that would not be intuitive?

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**Author:** ![marcellamaki](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/community.learningequality.org/marcellamaki/32/876_2.png) [@marcellamaki](https://community.learningequality.org/u/marcellamaki)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 4:20pm UTC](https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961/2 "2026-02-16T16:20:55Z")

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Hi @benKTF - welcome to the LE community forum, and thanks for your interest in Kolibri.

Our quiz setup is not particularly intuitive, and going directly from Excel \> database would likely be challenging, although I can understand that users are often looking for a faster approach than manually creating each question through the UI. Is this the main consideration for you – updating a lot of quiz questions/quizzes without manually creating each one? Is there anything else about your project that you’d like to share? Are you trying to do this work entirely offline, or do you have a way to use [Studio](https://kolibri-studio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)?

If you feel comfortable with coding, one option that you could consider that we already support is using a content integration script to create exercises (the contentNode type used in quizzes). The [documentation](https://ricecooker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html) is a useful starting place, as it explains the underlying system and architecture and provides some examples for different content types. There would still be some manual steps that would be needed, but it could significantly reduce the initial time investment.

Please feel to share some additional details about what you’re trying to achieve and how, and have any additional questions. I’ll do my best to answer them and share any other relevant documentation or resources that could be useful.

Marcella

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**Author:** ![benKTF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f14d63/32.png) [@benKTF](https://community.learningequality.org/u/benKTF)\
**Post date:** [February 16, 2026, 9:51pm UTC](https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961/3 "2026-02-16T21:51:20Z")

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Thanks Marcella. Yes this looks like a useful halfway approach that I think we can integrate. We have soft copies of 6 years worth of curriculum from a Papua New Guinea based Adult Ed correspondence course that we are looking to integrate to some level on Kolibri. It would be offline. We find that students often fail at the exam stage of the course so are looking to set up some practice exercises for them to try their preparation out on before the big day! That and there is a real need for them to revise Math and English assignments so the quizz format pulling random questions is great - We gust need to enter potentially hundreds of questions.

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**Author:** ![marcellamaki](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/community.learningequality.org/marcellamaki/32/876_2.png) [@marcellamaki](https://community.learningequality.org/u/marcellamaki)\
**Post date:** [February 20, 2026, 3:12pm UTC](https://community.learningequality.org/t/writing-quizzes-directly-to-database-from-excel/3961/4 "2026-02-20T15:12:26Z")

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Hi @benKTF – that’s helpful context. There are a variety of options for learners interacting with questions, which you can use one or more of depending on what would be most helpful for them to prepare for their exam.

A first point of clarification, there aren’t “quiz questions” specifically within Kolibri Learning Platform or Kolibri Studio. All quizzes in Kolibri are created from the Content type `Exercise` which contains one or more questions. The [content has to be imported into Kolibri](https://kolibri.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manage/resources.html)– we don’t currently support content creation within Kolibri yet. To create that content, you can do so on Studio via the UI (manually, which can be time consuming) or using the scripting method that I linked the documentation for, by creating a [Channel](https://kolibri-studio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/publish_channel.html) and adding new exercises. You can optionally set the exercise to be a “practice quiz” (more on this later).

 ![Screenshot 2026-02-20 at 10.06.39 AM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/learneq/original/2X/9/95b24d877245f376d2530376b29d9bd7a24c8c05.png)

Once you [publish](https://kolibri-studio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/publish_channel.html) and then import the content from Studio into Kolibri, those `Exercise` questions can then be made available to learners. At this point, the materials will work offline in your Kolibri setup. You can repurpose the same questions as practice (as either an “exercise” or “practice quiz”) or as an assessment (“quiz”) over the duration of a course/class within Kolibri.

**Assessments:**

As a **quiz** , the learner engages with the material one time, and it’s intended to be an assessment. Their responses are automatically graded, and they are able to access their quiz report with their results. They can’t edit, or resubmit.

 ![Screenshot 2026-02-19 at 1.07.49 PM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/learneq/original/2X/f/f944f0b5dce9f23770cb924c0ddb254ec4acd5d1.png)

\*\*  
Practice options:\*\*  
_can be assigned by a coach (teacher) as part of a lesson, or accessed independently via the Library page_

As a practice quiz, the learner engages with the material in a format similar to a quiz, and they see a report at the end that shows the correct answers. The key difference is that they are able to retake the quiz at their own discretion, as many times as they would like. We introduced this feature specifically to help learners with preparing for exams via taking practice tests or doing “past papers”.

 ![Screenshot 2026-02-19 at 12.44.40 PM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/learneq/original/2X/8/87a347a28b4b71ee904cf2968f4162733de914e6.png)

As an exercise, a learner engages with the material in a non-assessment style format (as they would classwork or homework) until they complete it. In this example, “get 5 questions correct” is what it means to complete the exercise.

 ![Screenshot 2026-02-19 at 12.45.06 PM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/learneq/original/2X/a/aca9a05c836ca6e08229fb3e2461c7ac1855dd26.png)

Any exercise resources, whether formatted as an “exercise” in Studio or as a “practice quiz”, can be used to create a regular “quiz” in Kolibri. Coaches (teachers) can even assign **the same questions** first as a lesson, and then as a quiz.

I hope this helps you have some additional ideas of the options that might be available to you to support the learner.