Inspera

Some Inspera exams are delivered on students’ own laptops, if this applies to your exam the Digital Assessment Service team will contact you to let you know and provide information about how to prepare your students.  

Taking a digital written exam on their own laptops is preferred by students, as it allows them to produce written work using a machine they are familiar with from producing coursework assignments.  

Students taking a BYOD exam need to install and test the Safe Exam Browser software on their laptops ahead of the exam. Any student who does not have a suitable laptop they can use to take the exam can complete a form to request to use a university computer for the exam. Deadlines to submit this form are: 

• November 11th 2022 for a Semester 1 Digital exam  
• March 10th 2023 for a Semester 2 Digital exam   

Resources available (with all the information that students need to prepare for a BYOD exam) are on the Academic Skills Kit Inspera Digital Exams webpage.  

Module leaders who have a digital exam in their MOF for the current academic year will be contacted at the start of the relevant semester with guidance on preparing for the exam.    

Please see our key deadlines for semester 1 and 2 assessment periods in 2022/23: 

Module teams should inform students as early as possible that they will be taking a digital exam using Inspera.  

To ensure that your students are fully prepared for their Inspera exam you should: 

1.   Share and draw their attention to the student resources on the Academic Skills Kit webpage. Information on this page includes How to access demo exams to try out the Inspera software. This is recommended for all students, to familiarise themselves with Inspera before their exam.
2.   Add the Inspera student information module from Canvas Commons into your Canvas course. To do this:

• Search for 'Inspera Digital Exam' in Canvas commons (link to instructions in Canvas Orientation) 
• Follow the steps to import content from Commons into your Canvas course (link to instructions in Canvas Orientation) 

1.   Optionally you can set up a subject-specific practice test for your module using Inspera. To learn how to do this see Training and resources below. If you choose to set up a practice test you can decide whether to book a specific time and venue on campus, or whether to allow students to take the practice test in their own time.

Once the exam has taken place, the module team are responsible for:  

• checking the results of automatically marked questions (for example multiple choice questions)  
• marking manually marked questions (for example short written answer or essay questions)  
• confirming the final marks If you wish to push the marks through into the Canvas Gradebook this step is required for every Inspera exam, even if your exam contains only automatically marked questions.  

• releasing grades and feedback to students.   

To learn about these steps book onto an Inspera Digital Exam Marking webinar or workshop, or refer to the Inspera Guidance Canvas course.  

Inspera can be used for take home exams.  Note that take home exams cannot be locked down. 

If it is necessary to change planned in person exams to take home exams this can be easily accommodated in Inspera.  Inspera was used successfully to deliver take home exams in semester 1 2021/22 assessment period after the decision was taken to move present in person exams to remote assessment.  

Students can take open book Inspera exams through a standard browser via a link in Canvas and are not required to download or install any special software.   

Turnitin similarity checking is available for written questions in Inspera if required. Marking will be done using the Inspera marking tools, it is not possible to use Turnitin Feedback Studio to mark an Inspera exam.  

If your semester 1 or semester 2 assessment period digital exam used Inspera and there is a need for an August assessment period exam for students who are resitting or who deferred, you may be able to use Inspera. There are some constraints on using Inspera in August assessment period, detailed below.

In person August assessment period exams

• There is a minimum student number threshold of 15 for an in person August assessment period exam to be run using Inspera. Exams that do not meet the threshold should use an alternative format, for example a paper-based exam.
• If the August assessment period exam is run using Inspera, any student who needs to sit the exam overseas will need to do so on paper, as it is not currently possible to support in person Inspera exam sittings at overseas venues.
• All in person August assessment period digital exams will be delivered in PC Clusters, including those which are delivered on students’ own devices in the semester 1 and semester 2 assessment periods.

Take home August assessment period exams

• There is no minimum student number threshold for a take home August assessment period exam to be run using Inspera.
• If any student needs to sit the August assessment period take home exam overseas they will be able to do so using Inspera.

Please see below the deadlines for August 2023 assessment period exam preparation:

Inspera training Webinars and in person workshops are available to book, and self-guided training is available to all colleagues in the Inspera Guidance self-enrol Canvas course.