Tips & Best Practices for Setting Up Online Exams

Communicate

• We recommend the use of Canvas Announcements to communicate with your students about the exam
• Canvas Announcements puts the information in front of your students through multiple avenues. 
  • Canvas Announcements appear on the course homepage, sends a student notification to their personal email address, displays in the Canvas Dashboard, and gets archived on your course if students need it for reference.

Set an Emergency Plan

• What constitutes an emergency?
  • For example:
    • Confirmation of submission- probably not.
    • Can't understand the question or reference to course information- maybe (up to you the instructor)
    • Loss of internet connection- yes. 
• For the different types of emergencies, who do students contact?
  • Teaching staff, student support desk, Canvas, Proctorio?
  • If you decide that students should contact the teaching staff for questions during the exam/ emergencies, give them a timeframe in which you will be actively monitoring your email (e.g. 1pm to 5pm).
  • We recommend teaching staff direct students to the student support desk for technical issues first (during support hours) so they can help students parse out whether what the issue is and who can best assist. Canvas and Proctorio offer 24/7 support.

Set Expectations & Exam Directions

• What are the expectations?
  • For example, is it an open note exam and what do you mean by that? What is the exam format? What course content will the exam cover?
• Give clear directions
  • Before students enter the exam, what do they need to know? What kind of question types will they encounter (i.e. multiple-choice, essay, formulas)? Helpful information to avoid common exam errors. We have resources for exam language that you can cut, paste, and edit and student exam checklists to get you started.

Timing

• Give sufficient time. No more. No less.
  • Giving just enough time helps up the integrity of the exam. For example, limiting the time for an open note exam allows students time for quick references but not to find the answers to things they didn't know. You should take into consideration the change in format.
• It is going to take your students more time to read through the exam than you. Different questions may take longer in digital format than it did on paper.
  • When estimating time per question, we recommend you have someone read through the exam on the screen to give you a sense of how much time a student will need and read the question and then add how much time you think they should take to answer the question.
• Submission format
  • If you have a file upload question, consider the extra time students will need to download your exam, open the file, scan the file, and re-upload to the Canvas exam. We recommend adding about 20% more time to the exam and explaining that the extra time is a buffer for technical issues. Visit our example "Buffer Time for Technology" exam language.

Randomization: Shuffle Answers

Select the option "Shuffle Answers" when building your Canvas exam. This makes it more difficult for students to collaborate on a question or share answers as the order of the answers will be different.

However, if you have any "All of the Above" or paired answer types, do not Shuffle Answers.

Randomization & Variance: Question Banks

One of the best ways to increase the integrity of your exams is to create randomize the question order and create question variance. You can do this through the use of Canvas Questions Banks and Question Groups.

Canvas Question Banks are a place to house questions that can be added to quizzes across courses or accounts.

Canvas Question groups allow you to place multiple questions from a group for students to answer. You can choose the number of questions that should be answered from the Canvas Question Bank and how many points to assign each question.

• Randomization
  • Creating a question group that pulls from a question bank randomizes questions and randomizes the order of questions within a quiz.
• Variance
  • When creating a question bank, you can make variations on calculations (e.g. duplicate the same question but with different numbers), definitions and IDs.
• Caveats to the use of question banks and groups. 
  • You may need to create multiple question banks and organize the content of each question bank so that students have a fair distribution of question types (e.g. Everyone has 10 multiple choice questions and 1 essay question. If you put all varying question types in the same question bank, one student may get  5 multiple choice questions and 5 essay questions).

Proctorio: Secure Remote Proctoring Tool

• The Harvard Extension School offers the Proctorio tool that helps set similar proctoring parameters as you would in the classroom. Proctorio parameters allow you to record the student as they take the exam, provide you with lockdown options, and flag suspicious behavior.
• Proctorio only works on top of Canvas Quizzes, in the Chrome browser, and with the Proctorio Chrome extension.
• Proctorio is not in real-time proctoring, in that you cannot monitor the exam while the student is taking the exam and Proctorio does not stop the students from their suspicious behavior.
• Proctorio boosts the integrity of your exam and gives you information about students to make decisions of whether there were any academic integrity violations.
• Proctorio is only available via request. 
  If you are interested in using Proctorio, please schedule a one-on-one appointment at least two weeks prior to the date of the first exam. There are nuances to the tool, and we want to ensure that it is properly configured for your exam and that the proper information is conveyed to students about its use.

Administer Your Exam at a Distance via

• A "paper" File Upload in Canvas Quizzes.
• A built-in Canvas Quizzes for Midterms, and Final Exams.
• A built-in Canvas Assignment for Final Projects.

Exam Policies  

• Online exams occur over a 24-hour window. Instructors may adjust the 24-hour window as long as it overlaps with the on-campus exam. 
• Noncredit and withdrawn students are not allowed to take final exams or submit final projects.
• Paper exams are not to be administered in lieu of an online exam unless such testing accommodations have been approved by the Accessibility Services Office.

Accessibility Accommodations

• Students must officially apply to the Accessibility Services Office (ASO) 
• The Accessibility Services Offices will contact you which students need accommodations and what form those accommodations should be
• Do not approve informal accommodations
• Visit our guide on extending time for students with official approvals
• Contact the Accessibility Services Office (ASO) for further questions at (617) 998-9640 or accessibility@extension.harvard.edu