Tests and exams

• Students studying remotely or off-shore will complete non-invigilated, online, time-limited tests and exams.
• Due to practical considerations, the availability of exams for students studying in different time zones may differ from those completed by on-campus students. Please note, you are able to determine offshore students in your course and to understand their group ‘section code’ in Canvas.
• Start times for tests are recommended to be after 1pm to allow for differences with Asian time zones, where most remote students will be situated. Rolling start times may be required for remote students in other time zones.
• Please refer to the reference guides from the Inspera Staff Development Hub for setting the availability of a test.

Any required changes to teaching delivery and assessments must adhere to inclusive design principles to avoid creating additional barriers to learning and teaching. Teaching staff should refer to the following resources to support inclusive course design:

• Canvas course: Inclusive Design for Canvas
• Design for accessibility of resources and information

In particular, it is important to take into account the support needs of students with disabilities in any changes to teaching delivery and assessments.

Any changes must align with the University’s Inclusive Learning and Teaching of Students with Impairments Guidelines and avoid creating additional barriers to learning for students with disabilities. These guidelines allow for ‘choice in assignment topics and formats where appropriate to provide different but equivalent assessment options’.

The University offers a range of support to students with disabilities to enable them to participate in teaching and to be assessed fairly. Teaching staff should work with Student Disability Services and the Assessment Services to enable:

• Special conditions in written tests and examinations.
• Approved special conditions for students with disabilities sitting tests and exams (approved special conditions will apply to any timed assessment of 30 minutes or longer, including if a student requires support such as a reader or writer).*
• Adjustments to online assessments to meet student support needs (e.g., extra time*, enlarged fonts, colour contrast changes, text to speech, spell check).
• Notetaking support to provide Canvas ‘Observer’ access to note-takers and/or permanent staff in Student Disability Services who are assisting with note-taking.
• Alternative assessment.
• Access plans for students.

* Where a student is approved a reader, but one is not available or appropriate, teaching staff should record an audio file of the question by following these guidelines for recording audio media.

Mid-semester tests

• Students with temporary or permanent disabilities or conditions that affect their ability to sit tests under the prescribed conditions may apply for special conditions through Student Disability Services.
• Approved students are entitled to special conditions for timed (on-campus or online) tests of 30 minutes or longer, including where appropriate support from a reader or writer.
• Students should be advised to contact Student Disability Services to discuss additional options for assistance in online tests.

Final exams

The Assessment Services will identify students with disability-related support needs that are not met by additional time alone (e.g., a reader or writer).* The Assessment Services will then work with course coordinators to find alternative solutions, including alternative times or locations, or different but equivalent assessment options in accordance with the University’s Inclusive Learning and Teaching of Students with Impairments Guidelines.

* Where a student requires a reader, but one is not available or appropriate, examiners should record an audio file of the question (see recording audio media).

• Students with temporary or permanent disabilities or conditions that affect their ability to sit examinations under the prescribed on-campus conditions may apply for special conditions through the Assessment Services.
• Students with impairments or special requirements should be advised to contact the Assessment Services to discuss additional options for assistance in an online examination.

The Inspera Staff Development Hub outlines question types that should be avoided due to accessibility reasons. Advice for staff on designing for accessibility may be found on the Inclusive Design for Canvas website; these principles also apply for Inspera.

Giving students a context for their efforts in their studies and the goals they are working towards, developing a mutual high-trust relationship with students, and talking with them about the importance of academic integrity and its consequences can help prevent academic dishonesty.

We encourage teaching staff to include a statement relating to academic integrity in online assessments.

Concerns with students posting or sharing questions and answers on social media during online assessments

The following are some other ways to minimise and/or mitigate posting/sharing of questions and answers:

• Sharing should be actively discouraged. However, if any assessment questions have been shared, they should be easily detectable if you have designed your assessment questions by asking students to:
  • Use reflective writing techniques to substantiate, support and/or personalise academic arguments.
  • Use critical thinking skills to analyse ideas with reference to sources, explanations, evidence, examples and interpretations of these.
  • Analyse, compare and contrast solutions to problems.
  • Diagnose and/or explain the methodology used.
• You may wish to consider reminding your students of the University Code of Conduct for students.
• Turnitin for Canvas Assignments and Quizzes should be used where possible, to detect similarities between students’ written answers.
• The normal policy and processes for academic misconduct, as per the Student Academic Conduct Statute, apply to exams conducted on-campus.

Keep in mind that if questions are modified, for example changing them from MCQ to short answer questions, you may need to reduce the number of questions for providing equivalency.

Avoid tasks with research expectations that will exceed the time frame. Students have been informed that the assessments should be able to be completed within the scheduled length of the test that it has replaced.

Consider whether you require your students to reference their sources. Referencing takes additional time for students to do, which should be accounted for in the total time to complete the assessment. References generally would not count towards the total word count.

Finally, please ask a colleague to review your test in advance. If delivering your test in Canvas, add them to your course with the Teaching Support role.

The following pertains to using Canvas to deliver a mid-semester test. Note that the University recommends the use of Inspera for online tests and exams, however, we note that some teachers are yet to make the transition to the Inspera platform.

We recommend you design the test as a series of short tasks, divided into sections.

• In Canvas, create an assignment group within Canvas Assignments.
• You may wish to add sections that includes both Quizzes and Assignment submissions within the same assignment group:
  
  • By separating out the learning outcomes to make it explicit to students what you are assessing, e.g., writing skills, reading comprehension, and so on…
  • By question types, e.g., multi-choice question, short answer, essay question.
  • By course topics.
  • By how you wish to organise marking, e.g., specialty topics of markers.
  • By functionality of Quiz or Assignment, depending on what you would like your students to do for their assessment.
• Remember to communicate clearly to students that all sections must be completed in order to complete the test. You can do this by:
  • Adding instructions to the Group name of the Assignment Group.
    
  • Adding instructions within a Canvas Quiz by selecting ‘Text (no question)’.
    
    
    

• Text-based submissions, e.g., short answers or essays, can now be checked using Turnitin for both Canvas Assignments and Canvas Quizzes.

It is important for students to know what knowledge they are expected to demonstrate in their online test or exam. Set clear expectations to help alleviate stress and anxiety and potentially decrease the likelihood of poor academic practice.

• Give plenty of warning when the assessment will be.
• Avoid introducing any new material during the assessment.
• Clearly set out your expectations for the assessment in the question instructions.
• Share the marking rubric with your students prior to them sitting the assessment.

Students are expected to complete the assessment under various conditions (environment, hardware, internet access etc.).

• For test and exams using Inspera, encourage students to sit the Inspera practice exam (students can select the Demo Test 1 exam).
• Give students a chance to review the academic honesty declaration statement prior to undertaking the assessment.

Provide clear instructions on the format of the assessment and the expectations on students—this will help minimise confusion and stress.

• Indicate the time it will take students to complete the whole assessment and also the different sections.
  E.g., Section 1: Essay #1 (this task should take you approximately 1 hour).
• For discursive, essay-type questions, indicate an expected word count that is appropriate for the level of study, discipline, whether they will be expected to reference their sources, and the weighting of the question. See: Short answer and essay questions.

Online tests that require the student to draw diagrams or write equations should be designed so that the answers are submitted via scanned images or photographs (meta-data must be included with any images uploaded). Prepare students in advance to download a document scanning app for their mobile device (e.g., Adobe scan, Microsoft Office Lens or Camscanner).

Students must have an opportunity to complete a practice exercise prior to the assessment to ensure they are familiar with the technological requirements for uploading images. For a mock Inspera test, students can select the Demo Test 1 exam.

The Copyright Act (section 49) allows anything to be copied for examination purposes. Examinations include any work which counts towards a student’s final grade in a course. This can involve setting questions, communicating the questions to candidates, or answering questions. For example, if staff would like to use images from a journal article for their assessment questions, this will not infringe copyright.

The exception does not allow the work to subsequently be made publicly available. For example, a thesis will need to be checked for copyright compliance before being uploaded into the University’s research repository.

Read detailed guidelines on the University’s copyright page.

Referencing is a mechanism for students to demonstrate their critical thinking skills in being able to research, identify, and evaluate information in using appropriate scholarly resources for their assessment task. It is also an important way for students to demonstrate their understanding of academic integrity.

We recommend students are given clear instructions on the expectations for referencing in online assessments—whether it is required, or how it will be assessed. Referencing takes time and should be accounted for in the total time to complete the assessment. References generally would not count towards the word count.

Open-book

Under the open-book designation, students may refer to any written/printed material, including online sources. Provide very clear guidelines to students of your expectations. We recommend you communicate to your students:

• Why they need to reference for their assessment.
• How you require students to reference (e.g., referencing style, in-text citation and end of text citations, expectations with paraphrasing and quoting, and so on).
• How referencing will be assessed (e.g., how many sources are expected, the quality of sources you expect, and so on).

If, as a lecturer, you are concerned about the possibility of students referring to inappropriate resources and/or inappropriately citing and referencing them and/or the potential for increased plagiarism, this option may be useful for open book assessments:

• Provide very clear instructions to students of your requirements, particularly to provide evidence of the reference.
• It would also make the task of marking easier if students are given clear instructions on what referencing style you would like them to follow. Refer to QuickCite for guides to referencing.

Restricted book

Under the Restricted Book designation, students must only refer to and cite from the resources listed and supplied, and must not refer to other resources.

Two types of citations you may wish for students to provide in their assessment:

• We suggest you require students to include in-text citations and provide instructions for them. A simple in-text citation you may wish to use is (author, year) and/or (author, year, p._) if a direct quote.
• For end-text citations (i.e., a reference list at the end of the document), you could either:
  • Provide students with the complete reference list.
  • Ask students to complete a reference list. Provide instructions on how they could do this e.g., refer them to the referencing style guide in QuickCite.
  • Not require students to include a reference list.

You need to include the Academic Honesty Declaration, the Student Support Statement (see the ‘Announcement to students before the assessment’ FAQ above), along with any special examination instructions.

It is best not to attempt to make corrections to questions while the test is in session. In the case of a Canvas Quiz, we suggest you wait until the test is finished, then either:

• Regrade the quiz and select the “Give everyone full credit for this question” option (the simplest solution).
• If you are using Canvas Quiz or Assignment for the test, create another Quiz or Assignment with a single (corrected) question for students to complete at their earliest convenience. If the exam is part of an Assignment Group that has a % weighting for the overall course grade, add the new single-question to the same Assignment Group. You should update the scores on the original (incorrect) question to zero, using SpeedGrader, so that this does not interfere with the overall score.

Note, other students may be wasting precious time on the incorrect question so make sure you let students know as soon as possible how they are to proceed through a Canvas announcement.

If using Canvas for the test, and depending on the technical issue encountered, you may consider using the Moderate Quiz feature to grant the student another attempt at the Quiz.* If the due date has expired, tick the ‘Manually unlock the Quiz for the next attempt‘ box. In this case, liaise with the student so they know what their new ‘due by’ date will be, then adjust the Quiz availability for the individual student for their second attempt.

If using Inspera for the test, examiners with the Planner role can add extra time for the affected student via the instructions on the Inspera Staff Development Hub. Follow the link for granting extra time for students using Inspera.

* It is not normally appropriate or fair to ask a student to retake a test at another time. Exceptions and aegrotats should be handled on a case by case basis, in the usual way.