Holding online exams

Attendance exams require by way of definition students to attend in person. Due to the coronavirus, you as a lecturer are thus required to offer alternative examination methods to attendance exams in the winter semester 2020/21, which do not require the students to attend in person. To be considered are both oral and written exams that can be completed at home and whose duration can range from a few hours to several weeks. 

You can find the rules for alternative examination methods here (on p. 36). It allows for alternative examination methods in the context of the ASPO (General Study and Examination Regulations) and in the winter semester even where these are not (yet) foreseen in Studies and Examination Regulations, in modules catalogues or the module descriptions. 

 

Moodle and EvaExam for online exams

Online exams can be conducted with Moodle or EvaExam.

	Moodle is the key e-learning platform of the Viadrina, which enables many learning activities for lecturers and students. Moodle can also be used for exams.
	EvaExam is a software solution that serves the online processing of exams. All lecturers can use EvaExam to conduct online exams. Contact the IKMZ  (elearning-support@europa-uni.de), initial contact, to obtain access.

 

Online exams in Moodle

At present, all online exams have to be open-book exams, because they allow students to make use of materials, scripts, and internet research etc. They are thus primarily suitable for testing synthesis and transfer work. You can find recommendations by the TH Wildau on creating open-book exams here. Unfortunately. A data protection-conform online exam supervisory system is not available to us at present.

To conduct exams in Moodle, you can use the activities “Task” or “Test”:

• The Task activity enables participants to submit solutions to tasks, which the lecturers can assess and provide feedback on. You can find information about applying this activity here
• The Test activity allows for the creation of tests with a variety of different types of questions (incl. multiple choice questions, true or false questions and short answer questions) and for the application of them in the course and as a self-assessment. You can find information about the application of this activity here

You can use different types of questions for both Tasks and Tests. You can find information about the possible types of questions here.

The following types of exams can be represented:

• Attendance exams
• Homework assignments
• Essays
• Oral exams

You can find documentation about Moodle for lecturers on the webpages of Viadrina under  Digitale Lehre and at Moodle.org.

Online exams in EvaExam

There is a detailed instruction sheet as a PDF for both creating and assessing exam question in EvaExam:

• You can find information on creating exams and exam questions in EvaExam here
• You can find information on the awarding of credit points and questions in EvaExam here 

 

Oral exams

Oral (final) exams can also be conducted using a video mode. The deans can provide information about the framework conditions.

Signing up for an exam

There are differences depending on the faculty

• Faculty of Law, Business Administration and Economics faculty: Only attendance exams have to be signed up for on ViaCampus. Homework assignments (exam homework) and oral exams are signed up for as agreed upon. Further information can be found here.
• Social and Cultural Science faculty: Attendance exams, homework assignments, oral exams must be signed up to via ViaCampus if ECTS points are to be credited. You find further information about this here.

The clear authentication for the participation in exams in Moodle is conducted with a username and password. In EvaExam, it is conducted with a unique TAN or directly via the EvaExan plugin in Moodle.

Resits

Resits can also be organised as on campus in a PC pool if this is permitted according to the latest contact rules. This is also important in the cases that students are not able to complete the exam for technical reasons.

Ensuring independent work

Always request a Declaration of Authenticity from the participants of an exam. A Declaration of Authenticity can be displayed in Moodle. There is a pre-setting under Moodle Tasks under “Submission Settings”. There is also a corresponding template for Moodle tests, which you can activate under “Further Access Restrictions”. It then has to be submitted prior to commencing the test.

Students agree to the following statement in Moodle:

Furthermore there are specimen forms which you can ask students to sign and return. 

There is a 

• specimen form by the cultural studies faculty here and a
• specimen form by the law faculty here.

Do you have any questions or are you lacking any information? You can contact the advisory team on online teaching at the ZSFL in the event of any technical and educational queries, who will be glad to help you in creating exams in EvaExam and Moodle. Contact us at: online-lehre@europa-uni.de