Assessment technology standards

Standards compliance and open APIs ensure interoperability and a more integrated and customised assessment experience. The Inspera Assessment platform is built on international web and learning technology standards.

Inspera Assessment offers also extensive REST-based APIs to enable customers with development capacity to provide a more integrated and customised end-user experience. We are continuously investing in our APIs to remove dependency on product roadmap as well as creating a clear separation between standard and bespoke functionality.

Identity and Access Management

Single Sign-On (SSO) provides many benefits, not least that after users sign in to one of the services at an institution, they are automatically authenticated into any other service that uses SSO. The user is only required to remember one set of credentials.

In general, adding support for a new identity provider only requires minor work, assuming one of the following standards is supported: SAML 2 or OAuth OpenId Connect.

For most of these integrations, a Privacy by design scheme for Inspera Assessment can be used to de-identify personal data. In this way, it is impossible to connect personal data to an identifiable learner without the use of additional information stored outside of our assessment platform.

Student Information Systems

Inspera Assessment has built-in support for a number of different Student Information Systems (SIS) to offer synchronisation from the SIS to retrieve information about users, roles, groups and learner's exam enrolments, and in some cases also transferring results back to the SIS after marking and/or grading has been completed. Integrations to a SIS greatly relieves the administrative work involved in managing assessments and reduces risks of errors in the processing of student and assessment data. Bespoke integrations can also be supported through the extensive Inspera APIs.

Question Banks

Inspera Assessment uses IMS Question and Test Interoperability Specification to model questions and tests. This ensures that Inspera Assessment renders questions based on a standard format, that items can be imported from, and exported to, other item bank systems, and that Inspera Assessment can be used in conjunction with external item banks. 

Custom Interactions

Inspera Assessment also supports a Custom Interaction API allowing customers to build specialised question types and stimuli elements with any JavaScript, including tools such as Geogebra and Desmos. These specialised question types can still be exchanged through the IMS Question and Test Interoperability specification and the IMS Global Assessment Custom Interactions specification.

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)

Inspera Assessment can be launched as a tool from a Learning Management System using IMS Global LTI, allowing Learners to be assessed directly through their own Education Institution's LMS. Canvas, Blackboard, and Moodle are currently supported.

Plagiarism control

Plagiarism reports can be requested on the test- or learner level in Inspera Assessment. Inspera Assessment supports plagiarism checks using Urkund and TurnitIn.

Open APIs

For more complex integrations the preferred way to integrate is via the Inspera Assessment open APIs. Inspera Assessment's set of REST APIs include:

• Support for creating and updating tests, including enrolment and access arrangements;
• Support for retrieving test results, including learner responses, their scores, and metadata;
• Support for reading, updating, and creating assessment content

Access to the API is controlled via OAuth using API Keys defined either for regular users or for dedicated system users in Inspera Assessment.

Learn more

Do you want to learn more about how to conduct online exams and assessments, and how Inspera Assessment can make your assessments accessible, secure, valid, and reliable? No worries, we wrote a "Guide to Online Exams and Assessments".