10 Designing Online Exams

Quick links to Exam Resource Webpages

Quick links to Exam Resource pages:

Recommendations for online testing

  • The key recommendation for all of the methods described below is to have a trial run of your exam, ideally with some sort of low/no-stakes real example test for students in the course to try. This will help them understand the process for the exam and will help you to discover any shortcomings or things to fix for the actual exam. More detail on this below.
  • In general, for large courses (several hundred students or more), consult with LT support to determine any concerns/adjustments that can help keep the submission process smooth and avoid overloading the servers (for example, staggering the start time or providing students with extra time to account for technical difficulties).
  • Academic Integrity: ideally, you create an assignment that discourages cheating, but in any case, you may also consider asking students to (digitally) sign an explicit integrity pledge and/or a form of online invigilation if necessary (see the Academic Integrity section for details).
  • Allowing exams to be open-book: assume students will use resources while taking an exam, and even encourage them to do so. Try to ask questions that probe deeper levels of knowledge and understanding, enabling students to apply, assess, and evaluate concepts and facts in meaningful ways. Encourage students to share and cite where they get information from and what resources they use, and be clear about which resources are not to be used, for example include instructions to clarify that any sort of reading might be okay but students should not actively solicit answers from websites.
  • Encourage students to collaborate/share questions and ideas: students will likely work together when they are stuck or confused. You can encourage working in small teams and ask them to include who they work with and in what ways.
  • Use question pools/randomization: if you have short-answer or multiple-choice questions, create pools so that students receive different sets of questions (this can also be done with essays and more complex questions).
  • Consider student-generated questions with explanations: instead of trying to ensure everyone answers your limited number of questions on their own, ask every student to create their own question with an explanation of how it would assess a certain topic or skill in a meaningful way. You can also assign students to answer each other’s questions and state whether those questions actually do assess these skills in appropriate ways.
  • Respect your own time: consider how much feedback students actually need/will use. Feedback can often be created for the whole group based on common challenges or problems, as opposed to individual responses.

Choosing an exam platform

The main platform options based on level of UBC support and local experience are Canvas, WeBWorK, Gradescope, and Crowdmark.  (Note: both Gradescope and Crowdmark will be funded centrally by UBC for 2020W Term 1.)

Canvas Quizzes and Assignments

Canvas quizzes have a variety of question types, and grading can happen directly in Canvas.

  • You can include an “upload a file” question type or comPAIR-style questions to probe higher-order/critical thinking about provided solutions without necessarily requiring students to produce those solutions as part of the test.  See also the section on Handwritten Responses.
  • Note about timed quizzes in Canvas: some users have experienced issues with this, so we would suggest using a quiz with a short submission window rather than a timed quiz.

See our Canvas guide for more information and the UBC Keep Teaching page on Assignments and Assessments for step-by-step guides to setting these up. For a side-by-side feature comparison, see our Learning Technologies for Online Exams table.

Crowdmark

Crowdmark allows students to submit directly to their system via their “Assigned Assessment” format: questions can be hosted on the Crowdmark platform and students respond with a photo/scan/PDF upload of their answer (they cannot enter answers directly on a web form like a Canvas Quiz). Grading happens online and can be distributed among a team (instructors and TAs).

For a side-by-side feature comparison, see our Learning Technologies for Online Exams table.

Gradescope

Gradescope supports both on-line “Homework/Problem Set” submission where students upload photos/scans of written answers and “On-line Assignments” (i.e., timed, no-paper needed; can mix multiple-choice questions with open response typed-text questions), as well as uploaded paper-based assessments. Grading happens online based on a rubric and can be distributed among a team (instructors and TAs).

  • To get started, you will need to submit a request to the LT Hub to have your course created set up in Gradescope; see: https://lthub.ubc.ca/guides/gradescope/.
  • Gradescope’s services are being funded by UBC centrally through December, 2020, so can be used for the Fall 2020 exam period.
  • For more information, see the LT Hub guide for Gradescope.

For a side-by-side feature comparison, see our Learning Technologies for Online Exams table.

WeBWorK – primarily for Math and Stats courses

Courses that already use WeBWorK may want to use it for all or part of their exam, for example a number of Math and Stats courses plan to run tests that consist of a combination of a WeBWorK portion and a handwritten portion submitted via Canvas (see above). Note that WeBWorK has a timed test feature as an alternative to its typical assignments used for homework – with this approach, students are not given feedback along the way with each question like they are on homework. However many faculty have found it simpler to use a standard assignment with a short time window and a small number of attempts (2-3) which covers a lot of technical issues students may encounter while still providing a timed element.

While you can learn more on the LT WeBWorK guide page and main WeBWorK resources page, it would be best to consult with people in your department that are familiar with setting up WeBWorK for tests.

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Skylight Guide to Teaching Online Copyright © by The Skylight Team. All Rights Reserved.

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