Examination in Inspera

Before the exam: Setting your exam

All Inspera users need a user account. Once you have logged in, you can start setting your exam and filling in the content.

User account 

User accounts are created by a number of authorised "superusers" at LU. Once authority has been conferred, an appropriate user role is also created. For information on superusers and authorised people at the faculty, please contact a member of Inspera’s administration group.

About user roles

Exam sessions 

Each group of assignments is linked to an exam session. Here, the actual test/test session and settings are created for the exam in question. You can switch on the spellcheck function for this process.  

Create an exam session (completely new test)

Exam content 

This is where you create the exam content, i.e. the assignments. You either create freestanding assignments as "assignments" or create them in a group, labelled "assignment group". Questions that have already been created can be reused, which is both practical and time-saving.

Create a question set

Different types of questions in Inspera

Inspera enables you to set an exam in a way that is appropriate to the specific course or component. There are a number of different question types and many different settings in Inspera. For example, you can set a wordcount limit on essay questions and randomise the order of answer options in multiple choice questions. It is easy to create question banks with different questions, which can be used to randomly select a certain number of questions for each student so that they get different sets of questions. The questions can be marked so as to be easy to find in your own question bank. Besides writing their answers in the exam, students can also submit answers in separate files. 
 

During the exam: Support and monitor 

During the exam session in Inspera, you can provide support via Monitor. The exam can be run with or without a Safe Exam Browser, which is a secure web browser that makes other resources on the unit inaccessible during the exam.

Monitor

Monitor is a function in Inspera that can be used to invigilate an ongoing exam. You can use Monitor even if the students are writing their exam anonymously, because an ID is automatically generated at the start of the exam. If the exam is not anonymised, the students’ names are visible in the ID column in Monitor.

Examples of possible functions using Monitor:

• Granting extra time
• Sending messages 
• Discovering students’ connection problems 
• Seeing when an answer was last saved 
• Seeing whether students have submitted their answers 

Different columns in Monitor signal events that need to be checked during the course of the exam, such as “Warnings” and “Answer saved”. “Warnings” refer to some kind of problem for the student, such as a poor internet connection. In “Answer saved” you can see when students last saved their answers. If several minutes have passed since an answer was saved, the reason for this should be checked. If the connection is lost, the student can continue to write the exam and the answers are downloaded as an encrypted file. 

Exam time and extra time
 

Safe exam browser

Safe Exam Browser (SEB) is a secure web browser which can be turned on in Inspera during exam sessions. SEB is installed on the computer and works on most units. The web browser shuts down access to all the resources usually available to the student externally via internet or in their own computer (as saved files). Once the safe exam browser is downloaded on the unit, it remains and can be used for future exams in Inspera. It is important to remind students to check that the browser is working before each exam, as various versions exist. 

Running exams without Safe Exam Browser

Running exams with Safe Exam Browser
 

After the exam: Assessment 

Once the exam has been completed and submitted, it must be corrected and assessed. An Inspera exam can either be corrected by the teaching staff member or be self-correcting. 

Assessment 

It is simple to correct and mark exams in Inspera under the "Assessment" tab. Corrections in Inspera save a lot of time as they can be done entirely digitally, while enabling different teaching staff members involved in the exam to mark them in the same location. Once the credits for the exam have been set and grades entered, the students can access Inspera and view their results. In addition to credits and grades, comments can also be entered. Inspera exams can also be printed out and marked on paper. Those who are to assess the exam are entered in the system when the exam is set up. Simple statistics on students’ grades can be generated in Inspera.

Digital assessment in Inspera

Printing exams and marking on paper

Self-correcting exams 

Another useful function in Inspera is that exams can be made self-correcting. Most of the question formats are self-correcting, which can save teaching staff a lot of time. Already on the same day as the exam session, the exam results can be ready for students to consult. An exam can be completely self-correcting or partially so, depending on the type of question format selected.