Dear instructors, to conduct your online exams more effectively and to minimize possible problems, you may take the recommendations below into consideration.
1- Check the participant list of the course for which you will hold an online exam and make sure that all students enrolled in the course appear on the list (if a student is missing from the list, you can resolve the issue by contacting the relevant department’s advisor and the Student Affairs Office).
2- If you set up a trial exam for your students before the online exam, you may have the chance to observe possible problems in advance. In addition, this allows your students to gain experience with online exams. With a trial exam, you can ensure that your students are better prepared for the actual exam, prevent possible problems and reduce your students’ anxiety levels.
3. If you want to prepare two different question booklets, such as Group A and Group B, for your online exam, you can create as many topics as the number of questions you will ask and create 2 different questions for each topic. Then, when creating the online exam, you can prepare two separate question booklets as Group A and Group B using the option to generate random questions from the question bank. Another method is to use the shuffle questions option. However, since this option shuffles the questions of the same exam, with this method all students are given the same questions in a different order.
4. If you want to create a true/false type question, you can do so by choosing the multiple-choice question option and writing “true” for one of options A and B and “false” for the other.
5. If you want your exam to include different types of questions, such as both open-ended questions and file upload, you can choose the Mixed exam.
6. In online exams, your students can move forward by answering the question or by leaving it blank using the leave blank option. The ability to go back to previous questions depends on the preference of the course instructor. It may be useful to state the points students should pay attention to during the exam in an instruction at the beginning of the exam.
7. To observe how your students see the exam during the exam, you can click the simulation button in the participant list after publishing the exam. In this way, you can also identify and assist students who cannot see the questions due to a technical problem.
8. If necessary, you can extend the duration of the exam. However, since students who have completed their exam before the duration is extended cannot benefit from this right, it is recommended that you extend the exam duration 15-20 minutes before the end of the exam or before the students complete their exams.
9. From the Exam Detail Report in the LMS, you can find out whether your students experienced technical problems (the time at which your students saw and answered the questions, their answers and scope) and obtain detailed information about their answers to the questions.
10. To prevent technical problems that may occur in exams, a copy of the prepared exam questions can be prepared on an alternative tool (Google Forms, Google Classroom, Socrative, Canvas). In this way, students who cannot see some of the questions in the exam due to a connection loss can complete their exam fully by answering the relevant questions on the alternative tool. Or, in exams with file uploads, students can be allowed to upload the file through an alternative tool.
11. To reach students who experience technical problems in exams instantly and guide them correctly, a live class session can be opened during the exam through the create meeting option in the LMS. In this live class, students can ask the instructor questions via chat, and any students experiencing technical problems can report the situation.
12. General internet problems or power outages caused by servers or internet service providers may occur during exams. Problems caused by servers or internet service providers are generally due to high exam traffic at certain hours. Therefore, exams can be planned in a balanced way so that they take place at hours of the day when exam traffic is lower, and exam coordinatorships can be asked to take the necessary measures in this regard.
13. If general internet problems caused by servers or internet service providers occur during exams, your students’ internet connection will be interrupted, and students may experience problems such as being unable to move to the next question, being unable to upload files, being unable to flag questions, or being unable to see some questions. In the event of such problems, you can direct your students to continue the exam through an alternative tool.
