Creating Questions in Inspera

Yes, a Question Set once created can be re-used. The Digital Exams team recommend duplicating your Question Set and then editing, this means there's a clear audit trail of the Question Set used in prior years.

How to duplicate your Question Set

1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area)
2. Click on the Author tab
3. In the search bar, type the Question Set name/module name (in this example a ‘demo’ Question Set is being searched for)
4. Find the question set you wish to duplicate and click into the tick box (on the left hand side)
5. An options bar appears along the bottom, click 'duplicate'
6. A message will appear about the duplication, click 'continue'
7. Click into this new ‘copy of’ question set
8. You can re-label the name of the question in the top left corner using the pencil icon.

You can make any changes to the Question set for your upcoming exam.

Yes, a Question Set once created can be printed as a PDF. You could use this PDF to produce a back-up paper.

How to print your Question Set

1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area)
2. Click on the Author tab
3. In the search bar type the question set name/module name
4. Find the question set you wish to print and click on the name to open this
5. Select the print icon in the top right corner
6. On the right hand side click ‘download question set’
7. The download may take a minute or two to prepare, once ready select download now
8. The download will be in your downloads folder

Should you wish to change what is available on your PDF, you can use edit Settings. Once within the Print screen, drop down the settings bar

Settings allow you to:

• remove maximum marks
• remove ‘documents’ or instruction pages
• remove certain questions from the PDF (i.e. hide auto marked questions)

The most commonly used feature for us, is to untick question maximum marks so these are not visible on the PDF.

There are a couple of ways you can share your question set content with other colleagues or your external examiners.

For other colleagues on your module team, you may find it useful to add them as a 'contributor' to your question set. This will allow them to view questions and preview them in Inspera. This is also particularly useful if you are creating the content together with another colleague.

How to add contributors to your question set:

1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area)
2. Click on the Author tab
3. In the search bar type the question set name/module name
4. Find the question set you wish to print and click on the name to open this
5. Select the person icon icon (on the left hand side of the icons in the top right corner)
6. Search the person's name and select them as a user from the drop-down menu that appears
7. If you would like them to receive an email about this, please keep the 'notify via e-mail' box ticket
8. Click 'Share'.

Please note that if you cannot find a user when searching for their name, it is likely that they have not accessed Inspera via Canvas yet, and therefore do not have an Inspera account. They would need to access Inspera via Canvas to activate this, and for their name to show in the list. There is guidance available on the self enrol Inspera guidance course on Canvas.

For external examiners, it is possible for you to add them as a contributor as well and ask them to access Inspera via Canvas. You may also wish to consider the option of downloading a PDF copy of the question set content from Inspera in order to share the question set content with them. See the FAQ: Can I print my question set? to find out how to download a PDF copy.

Yes, as default Inspera’s set so that auto marked questions, with a list of possible options, show these answer options to students in a random order.

How to turn on/off randomisation of answer alternatives

If you’d like to view this (or turn it off) please follow the following steps:

1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area)
2. Click on the Author tab
3. In the search bar type the question set name/module name
4. Find the question set you wish to edit/check and click on the name to open this
5. Locate the question, to enter editing options click the pencil icon
6. Click into the marking box to load alternatives menu on the right hand side
7. Scroll down to options and open the drop-down
8. Random order of alternatives can be checked or unticked at the bottom of ‘options’.

Questions or question sets can be imported into Inspera using QTI. Inspera have provided a guide.  

However the Digital Exams team strongly recommend questions are created using Inspera Author, to gain access to the full range of question creation features. Further information about question features can be seen on our dedicated webpage. Due to workload capacities the Digital Exam Team cannot support the importing of QTI files into Inspera.

Please be aware, it is not possible to update existing question sets by import. If you have an existing question set you wish to edit, you can do this on Inspera. The Digital Exams Team recommend duplicating your original question set. Please see FAQ 'Can I re-use my question set for an upcoming Inspera exam?'

Yes, users can add labels to individual questions to help with general organising and for locating questions with specific content. 

Inspera have created the option to filter on labels that have been added to questions. It is now possible to be able to filter on more than one label simultaneously. 

Using labels in practice

You can add labels to questions in your question set. For example, you may wish to label your questions with the topic (e.g. Topic X, Y OR Z) but you may also want to add another filter, such as the year the question is from. When searching the question bank of all your questions in Inspera, it is now possible to filter so that you can find questions that are, for example, from ‘2023/24’ and from ‘topic X’, rather than all questions coming up with either of those filters.

How to filter using labels

1. Go to Author, and then select Questions.
2.  Then select ‘filter’.
3. Select the ‘labels’ drop down and search for the labels you wish to find via the search box. You can then select these via the tickboxes.
4. Use the ‘any’ button if you would like to find any questions using any of the label(s) selected, or use the ‘all’ button if you wish to find questions that have all of the labels you have selected. This will exclude questions that only have one of the selected filters.