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: 

• 11th November 2023 for a Semester 1 Digital exam  
• 8th March 2024 for a Semester 2 Digital exam   

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

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 2023/24: 

To access an Inspera digital exam, students need to log into a campus computer or compatible device using their University credentials. It is highly recommended that students are reminded of this before their exam. If they have forgotten their password, they can reset it via it.servicedesk@newcastle.ac.uk.

Should a student not be able to log in to a device on the day of the exam, students will be allowed - where possible - to take a paper version of the exam. Paper back-up exams are created using the Inspera question set designed by module teams, and colleagues from the central Exams office organise printed versions to be made available in the exam venues.

However, please consider that a back-up paper may not always give students the same experience as an interactive digital exam (e.g. allow-listed use of websites, videos, audio, word count limits). If a module team wishes to include content that cannot be replicated in a back-up-paper, please discuss mitigations and alternative approaches further with the Digital Assessment Team (contact via digital.exams@ncl.ac.uk).

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) 

Optionally you can set up a subject-specific practice test for your module using Inspera. 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.

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 2024 assessment period exam preparation:

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 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.  

A basic digital drawing tool can be made available for students to use when answering essay questions in Inspera. If your students need to create more sophisticated drawings as part of the answer to a question, or to handwrite content such as equations on paper, there is the option to use Inspera Scan.

Inspera Scan enables students to hand draw part of an answer to a question in their Inspera exam. After the exam the completed scan sheets will be returned to the School for scanning. The scans are uploaded to Inspera and can be marked online as part of a student's answer to the relevant question.

There are 2 different types of Insepra Scan sheet available, a Grid Scan Sheet and a Blank Scan Sheet. If Inspera Scan is required for your exam, when you complete the digital exam form you will be required to state how many of each type of scan sheet each student sitting the exam will require.

Note that Inspera Scan sheets are designed for content that students need to submit to be marked as part of their answers to questions in the exam. Scan sheets are not intended for rough work. As standard students are provided with a small amount of paper for rough work for all digital exams. If you require your students to be provided with more paper for rough work during your exam you can request this separately from the Exams Office when the backup paper is submitted via the Exam Paper Portal.