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Hi, my name’s Rosie MacLachlan and I’m Senior Lecturer in Learning Development – I work at the Academic Success Centre supporting students on all courses with their academic skills and preparation for assessment. Today I want to talk to you about the move to online assessments and how you can best prepare for them.
In moving your assessments online, assessors have needed to think about the learning outcomes for your programme, the types of knowledge they need you to demonstrate, and how this can be achieved in an equitable way online. This means that across different programmes, and across different modules or topics within the same programme, a variety of assessment formats is likely to be used. This briefing covers the likely format of your exams, the Statement of Integrity you’ll be asked to sign when completing them, and where you can access support during the revision period.
Format of exams
Many online assessments will be available for an extended time window of at least 24 hours. This doesn’t mean you are expected to spend 24 hours completing the exam. In fact, you may have a much shorter time-constrained window within the 24 hours, so that you can choose when to start the exam, but once you do you must complete it within one sitting.
We know that adjusting to completing an assessment online isn’t easy, and for most courses you will have 25% extra time than you would for an in-person exam to allow time for you to get to grips with the online format. If you have any technological problems within the assessment window, the Canvas team will be on hand to support you and you will not be penalised.
If you are studying medicine this process is different, as you will be completing exams on a national Medical Schools Council platform. Detailed information about these exams has already been sent to MBBS students, explaining why their exams are being run differently, and who they can contact on the day if there are problems during the exam.
*Knowing the format of the exam will help you prepare for it, so whatever course you’re studying make sure to check the information provided by your programme team*
Statements of integrity
When completing an assessment online you will be asked to sign a Statement of Integrity and Professional Conduct, promising that the assessment will be all your own work. There are two version of this statement reflecting two different types of assessment:
If your exam is ‘time-constrained’, you will have a limited time – say two hours - to answer a number of questions. These may test recall of knowledge, scientific facts, or your ability to apply your knowledge in selecting a single-best answer. These assessments emulate an in-person exam, and you must not look up information during the exam. As well as breaching the Statement of Integrity, doing so would waste considerable time and may lead you to incorrect answers.
If your exam is open for a longer period, you will likely have a number of questions to go away and work on, prepare your answer, and submit within a longer submission window, most usually 24 hours. Questions in these exams are generally focussed less on factual information, and if you look up a few facts whilst completing the assessment that’s not going to count much towards the quality of your answers, because your assessors are more interested in how you think about and apply knowledge. In these exams, it’s okay to refer to a source to check a fact or two – as long as you do so intelligently and not slavishly.
As I’ve mentioned, if your assessment is open for 24 hours this doesn’t mean you’re expected to spend 24 hours completing your answer: you should have a word count as a guide for how extensive your answer needs to be. Equally, just because you have a longer time period to complete your answers, don’t think you’ll be able to find out everything you need to know during the exam period - you should go into the exam period already decently prepared.
Support available
If you’d like to speak to someone outside your programme about revision, time management, exam technique, or any other study issues, the Academic Success Centre is running remote one-to-one appointments through Microsoft Teams. You can book one of these through this link, or find more information in the Study+ area of Canvas.
That’s all from me – stay safe and good luck with your exams.