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All regulations about assessment and examination can be found in the teaching and examination regulations (OER) of your degree programme. It describes for every course which examination method is applicable. Any changes in this assessment method can only be made with the permission of your examination board and your programme director.

On this page you will find detailed information on the following topics:

Examination
Zoom for Online Examination
Take-Home Exams

Any changes in your course examination which deviate from the information you provided in the study guide (course manual) should first be checked with your Programme Director or Director of Education. You cannot change the type of examination without express consent from the examinations board!

Examination

Things to consider

Methods of examination

The following types of exams might be acceptable to your exam board (always check in advance).

Online tools for examination can be found on this page: Online Examination Tools

Timed Take-home Exam

Paper Assignment

Oral Exam

Fully Parameterised Questions

Manually Parameterised Questions

Please note that these options are not necessarily available at your faculty or supported by your faculty's ICTO support staff. For example, before you decide to use TVO as an individual teacher or educational programme, please realize it is a complex platform and relies heavily on the availability of your local ICTO team. Check with your ICTO team first if your technical choice is feasible with the current support available.

Zoom for Online Examination

Disclaimer: double-check all the details for the relevant exam. Below you will find a general example but depending on your exam you might have to adjust some specifics.

Preparation

Contact the digital test support from your faculty ICTO team about communication and support for the examination. Have three teachers available, one of which will give the explanation, one teacher will be the host and gives the other two teachers the co-host rights in the Zoomsession. Make sure you have a way to communicate outside of Zoom, for example through Whatsapp, mail, Telegram or Discord.

Compulsory settings

Privacy Considerations regarding Zoom Proctoring Surveillance

Checking the identity of a student must take place in a breakout room. However, this does not mean that a student has to stay in the break-out room but it is the most privacy friendly way of surveillance and from a privacy invigilation, it is the preferred method.
No official statement is made about the maximum number of students in a break-out room, this is up to the Examinations Board to determine. However, from a privacy perspective, the fewer students the better.
Students are allowed to use the virtual background function. We do not need to see the student's room.

Zoom Settings

Settings prior to a Zoom session

Settings during to a Zoom session

zoom 1-1.png

zoom 2-1.png

What do the other co-host do?

The other co-hosts are unaware of what the host is doing with the breakoutrooms. As long as the host does not click on "Open all rooms", everyone is in the same common room. After the hosts clicks on "Open all rooms", everyone, including the co-hosts, gets an invitation to join the breakout-room.

From that point onwards, the co-host may

Register attendance (in an Excel sheet or by hand, for example)
Ask the participants to leave the microphone open and informs them that they can lower the volume during the examination
Report to the host that everything is ready in their breakout room

The examination

Communicate to students beforehand

Students must be informed about

1) How online invigilation is to take place.
2) How the identity of the students is to be established (procedure) (NB: using student ID card); when determining a student’s identity by way of their student ID card, the candidate (student) and one of the invigilators will be alone together in a breakout room.
3) That students may be asked to share their browser screen with the live test (not the entire desktop) with the invigilator using the screen sharing option in the breakout room before submitting the test.
4) Who will be doing the online invigilation during the examination.
5) Where and to whom students should direct any questions and problems they may have.
6) Whether Zoom audio and/or camera/webcam features should be switched on for the duration of the examination or whether deviations are permitted.
7) Whether mobile devices should be placed in view or at an unreachable distance.
8) Whether or not use of the lavatory is permitted during the examination; students’ attention will be drawn to the UvA’s regulations governing fraud and plagiarism.
9) Which version of the Zoom client software students should have installed.
10) How the login procedure works, including the additional password that is required by a Zoom call for online invigilation.
11) It is recommended that students switch off (mute) their audio during the examination and only communicate with the lecturer or invigilator using the chat function. Audio should only be switched on (unmuted) at the request the lecturer or invigilator/
12) That no data is stored regarding the administration of the examination u.
13) Students’ attention should be drawn to the agreements that the UvA has concluded regarding Zoom (https://student.uva.nl/content/az/zoom/zoom.html).
14) what the emergency procedure is in the event there is an unforeseen interruption of the connection with Zoom for more than x (e.g. 3) minutes. It is recommended that an emergency phone number or other method of communication is used for emergencies.

You can find a detailed template of instructions to be given to students at the beginning of examination in this document. Be aware to double check first if this setup corresponds to your own examination.

Communication by students with the teachers:

Students' microphone is off by default.
Students can only send chat messages to the teachers.
If a student has a question, problem or remark, they can send a message to a teacher who has their camera on and is not giving a verbal explanation at that moment. There will be at least three teachers during start-up and shutdown (one of them will give explanations in between). During the exam, there is usually one teacher available. The questions will be answered as soon as possible.
If the students' question cannot be solved through chat, the student may be placed in a breakout room where the question can be discussed with an instructor (without bothering others).

See the guide on how to monitor Zoom attendance here.

Creating the Assignment and Zoomsession in Canvas

Assignment in Canvas

In the Assignment in Canvas document, it is explained in detail how to properly set up the assignment in Canvas that will be used for the exam.

Zoomsession in Canvas

In the Zoomsession in Canvas document, it is showed in detail how to create a Zoomsession in Canvas for the exam.

Written Exams with Zoom

In case you need a written exam (for example with math exams), the Written Examination in Zoom document will provide an overview on how to set this up and what you need to conduct a written exam through Zoom.

Take-Home Exams

What

This method of examination typically consists of one or more writing assignments, requiring higher-order skills, involving application an analysis, not just reproduction and showing basic understanding. The assignment needs to tap into a deeper understanding, since answers to simpler reproduction questions are just too easy to share among students, jeopardizing the integrity of the exam.

How

To administer a take-home exam online, you could consider using a Canvas assignment. You can set the start and submission date and select different types of files that students can submit, for example a pdf, Word document, or PNG image. You can use the speedgrader and a rubric to grade the submissions more efficiently. Another option is to use our digital exam software Test Vision Online (TVO).

Fraud issues

From the perspective of fraud and plagiarism, a take-home exam is justifiable when the writing assignment is sufficiently complex or challenging, and strict time limits are in place, such that collaboration and plagiarism become unappealing. When designing the exam, it is important to realise that setting such strict time limits can be stressful for many students. In addition, some special needs students are given more exam time as a rule. If you choose a more technically advanced method of administration (for example, TVO compared instead of a Canvas assignment), the risk of technical failure increases. This risk puts additional stress on students. It helps to have a good fallback scenario and to communicate this to students, with steps on what they should do when they experienced technical problems.

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