Aleksander Lorentzen:
It started with a national student campaign in 2011 where the students wanted "Computer on the exam day" where they basically wanted to digitalise pen and paper (and not much more). This student campaign aligned with "The Administrative Streamlining Programme" at UiO, which aimed to review and develop administrative systems, routines and organisational forms that would ensure efficient and professional administration. This created a bottom-up and top-down situation where UiO was positioned to extrapolate on this and initiate a unified digital assessment project that has led us here. Nowadays the typical student is a "digital native" and expects to have access to digital assessment at the university level as a continuation from primary and secondary school. They demand more of the assessment platform and the digital tools that are available.
Karina Aronsen Olsen:
Jeremy Bodey:
Inspera’s offline capabilities are one of the distinguishing factors that really improve our digital assessment stability for students. We’ve not had many students who have been offline at the point of submission (remembering that it continues to run the exam and save locally if the internet is down during the exam) but where they have had to send us their assessment as a file, clear guidance has meant this worked smoothly.
Karina Aronsen Olsen:
When the internet connection is lost, the responses you make in Inspera Assessment will be saved in your browser. Students can therefore continue working without an internet connection, and then choose Save submission as a file. The file will be downloaded locally to your computer and will be unique to you, the test, and Inspera Assessment.
Aleksander Lorentzen:
Yes, the University of Oslo (UiO) has a Centre for Learning, Innovation & Academic Development (LINK). LINK is the University of Oslo's Teaching and Learning Center. The Centre stimulates a diverse development of teaching and learning processes by:
Jeremy Bodey:
Inspera enabled BPP to re-think how and what we assess. The implementation of a digital assessment platform is a catalyst for driving assessment change.
Karina Aronsen Olsen:
Yes, this is a feature we built into the platform from the very beginning. Students can be assigned extra time for special exam arrangements. This can be set up manually or pulled in from an integration if the information already sits somewhere else (perhaps the student information system). If for any reason the student logged in and found that the extra time was not available for them, they could request an update and staff could give them extra time during the exam.
Jeremy Bodey:
We have a significant number of students with learning support agreements who require extra time. We value the flexibility in Inspera to set individual times if necessary but keep the students within the same exam and therefore question set to prevent multiple instances of an assessment and the possibility for errors between them.
Aleksander Lorentzen:
At UiO we mainly use Scantron/Inspera Scan for high-stakes (school) exams. For home assignments/exams, Inspera´s built-in solutions for inserting special characters and/or equations, and for inserting drawings can be used. It is possible for candidates to enter equations and symbols in MS Word and then upload the file as a regular upload assignment in Inspera. And finally, it is possible to take photos or scan documents using a mobile camera, and then upload these files to Inspera. See UiO’s guidelines here.
Karina Aronsen Olsen:
Yes, most of our university customers set up a Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with us within the first week of using the platform. This is quite straightforward and allows students to log in with their existing university credentials.
Jeremy Bodey:
We use Single Sign-On using Office365 and Auth0. It means students have one less thing to worry about on exam day.
Aleksander Lorentzen: My top 5 tips would be:
Follow this link to watch a full recording of the Q&A Coffee Break held on 9 December 2020. Enjoy!
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