Guidelines for Staff and Students

While today's internet technology is becoming increasingly advanced, it can't always be relied on to perform critical tasks with 100% success. Like other such systems, computer assisted assessments can be affected by failures. Staff and students should be fully aware of the types of problems that can occur and staff should have a fall back position to allow the students to continue the assessment despite such problems.

The safest fall back position is to have paper versions of the assessment to hand!

• Before the Assessment
• At the Assessment
  • Tips for Students
    
• After the Assessment
• Problem scenarios (and solutions)

Before the assessment

1. Ensure that students taking the assessment understand what percetage of the final mark is made up by the results of the test.
2. Conduct at least one formative assessment using the CAA system with the students to familiarise them with the user interface.
3. Give students the opportunity to ask questions about the online assessment beforehand. The FAQs by Hosted Users contains answers to commonly asked questions.
4. Request that invigilators acquaint themselves with the CAA procedures beforehand and give them the opportunity to ask questions.
5. A sign-in sheet should be printed off listing the name of each student expected to complete the assessment.
6. Print off the student login details and one paper version of the assessment for each student.
7. Ensure that extra PCs are available in the room to cope with single PCs failing. 10% extra is recommended.

At the assessment

1. Get each student to sign their name against the sign-in sheet before sitting down at a computer.
2. Explain how much time they have to complete the test.
3. Split the students into groups of 10. This is to allow for staggered start and finishes which will ensure that the server isn't over-burdened with too many simultaneous requests.
4. Start the assessment for the first group and after a delay of approximately 1 minute, start the next group, delay for a minute before the next group, and so on.

Tips for Students

You should already have completed at least one assessment using the TOIA system. If you haven't then please speak to your class lecturer.

Below is a screenshot of a sample test with highlighted areas for you to note.

Please note the following:

1. The time remaining to complete an assessment is always visible in the top right hand corner of the window.
2. Before you submit: Check your answers easily by using the question links that appear alongside the question. You can make changes until you press the Finish button.
3. Finish button: only press this once you are ready to submit your answers for marking. Once you've submitted the test there is no way to go back and make changes.
4. Question links: a cross symbol (x) in the link means the question hasn't been answered.

After the assessment

1. Ask all students to sit patiently at the desk until the last group has submitted their assessments.
2. Go round the room and check that each student has properly submitted the assessment before they leave the room.
3. Check the system to ensure that assessments were saved and (if possible) take a backup of the results.

Problem scenarios

1. None of the students can call the system, log in, or start the test (and you've tried everything you can think of)

Revert to paper and hand mark the assessments. Inform the technical support team about the problem and ask them to check the server logs to find out what the problem was.

2. A single PC fails for a student part way through a test.

The student moves to a spare PC and restarts the test.

3. Many PCs are failing and there aren't anough spares to allow them all to continue.

Consider re-running the test for the affected students. In TOIA, as long as the "Save reponses at the end of each page" checkbox has been ticked in the assessment's preferences, the results they'd entered up to the point of failure can be retrieved.

4. Some students are attempting to copy each others answers.

It is recommended that you randomise the questions so they can't copy from one another. Each student will then see questions in a different order or see slightly different questions.

5. Somebody else is attempting the test in place of your student from a different lab.

Restrict the test to the domain and IP addresses of the exam room's PCs.

If you have any queries about these guidelines, please contact us.