Remote Tests & Assessments

[Matt Osment]

Can the 24 hour period given to students to take the exam extend into a reading day? For example, 12 pm on Friday, May 1, until 12 pm Saturday, May 2 (which is a reading day).

Do instructors have to give a 3 hour exam? Instead could it be a timed 90 minute exam?

Thanks!

[Paul Wolff]

@Matt – Here’s what the FAQ in the Exams portion of the Keep Teaching site says about this:

Can I give my course exam on a reading day?

Your exam cannot be due on a reading day, as these are days scheduled to give students time to study. (Your exam is due during your assigned exam time as seen on the registrar’s calendar). However, to give your students more flexibility to manage their own schedules you can have it available and open on a reading day.

[Paul Wolff]

@Matt – to your other question, I think this FAQ from the Exams portion of the Keep Teaching site covers it but let me know if you need more info. – see the 3rd bullet in particular:

Does my exam have to be completed by students during the three–hour window my class is scheduled for?

No. We see a longer window of time to access the exam as more accommodating to a diverse group of students.
Here are some example variations for an exam scheduled for 8-11 AM on Friday, May 1.

• The instructor releases the exam at 11 AM on Thursday, April 30th with no time limit. Students must complete and upload it by 11 AM on Friday, May 1st.
• The instructor releases the exam at 11 AM on Wednesday, April 29th with a 3-hour time limit. Students must complete and upload it by 11 AM on Friday, May 1st.
• The instructor releases the exam at 11 AM on Wednesday, April 29th with a 1-hour time limit*. Students must complete and upload it by 11 AM on Friday, May 1st. *The instructor accounts for the 2 hours lost by holding 2 one-hour review sessions with students during the last week of class.

[Gerald Cecil]

It seems that the Provost and some faculty elected not to endorse a site license to UNC of plagiarism software because only uninformed freshmen would possibly plagiarize and papers become part of the commercial product’s database, which is evil. NCSU currently uses turnitin and Duke uses ithenticate. I used grammarly a few years ago and found it useful. However, it is no longer free. Google only limits one to 32 words in a search. Must I send name-free papers to my NCSU prof. neighbor? What do people use here?

[Paul Wolff]

@Gerald, I can’t speak to the rationale behind the decision you are referring to when you reference our Provost and some faculty, but I’m sure it was a thoughtful and nuanced decision-making process. I would recommend reviewing this document prior to sending any student’s paper/exam to someone without their express consent (whether an individual or an external company where UNC doesn’t have a license): UNC Ferpa Information. In particularly, note the section under “What is an educational record.” It’s also worth reading through the section under “When can I disclose education record information about a student?” I am not an expert on FERPA by any means, but it’s worth clarifying if removing a student’s name would be enough to be in compliance. The Registrar should be able to answer that question. Please note that these forums are open to anyone with an onyen to read and review.

As you noted, UNC does not currently have a license for anti-plagiarism software, though individual schools may have negotiated their own license.

[Gerald Cecil]

Good point re FERPA. I guess I’ll plod through google 32 words at a time …

[Stefan Jeglinski]

For some reason I was unable to find the Registar deadline for students to apply for and be granted a final exam excuse (presumably what we used to call “pink slips,” for exam time conflicts or 3 in 24 hrs) – please post a link for my feeble eyes. In my experience, the Registrar rarely or never enforced a deadline anyway, because we’ve always had students appearing almost at the final exam saying that they just got their pink slips, but at any rate: what is the deadline, and in this special semester, are we allowed to be strict about the deadline?

[Paul Wolff]

@Stefan – Here is the link I was able to find with relevant info: https://advising.unc.edu/announcement/final-exam-excuse-request/

That said, we are encouraging everyone to be flexible right now. Our students, faculty and staff are all going through a great deal of stress, so if a student missed this particular deadline, I would encourage any faculty to approach the student with compassion given the circumstances.

This info. from the Exam portion of this site may also be of interest:

What will happen to the 3 in 24-hour exam excuse for students?

Students will be requesting excuses electronically (formerly “pink slips”). Students who have been approved for an exam excuse will be notified that it is still their responsibility to reach out to you to arrange alternative plans for their exam. (If you are opening a large window of time for your students to take the exam, they may not need an alternative exam. Please clarify this with each student.)

For students majoring in the College of Arts and Sciences, an email will be sent to primary instructors at 7 p.m. daily, summarizing all exam excuses across each of their sections in an easy-to-read table. (The email will be sent only if a new exam excuse has been approved that day.) Only approved requests for exam excuses will be sent to the instructor. The table will include new requests in highlight with previously approved exam excuses below. Therefore, only the most recent email from the exam excuse system needs to be saved.

This process is only for students of the College; instructors will still receive emailed .pdf versions of the exam excuse directly from the deans (or their designees) of the professional schools for any student for which their primary major is in one of the schools.

[Stefan Jeglinski]

Thanks Paul! To readers, the actual answer to my question is Apr 23. I can certainly appreciate the compassion comment; note carefully that faculty and staff are included in the stress guidance, as well as students.

[Joel Kingsolver]

Prior to publishing the final exam (via Sakai) for my undergrad class, I want to test out the exam by releasing it to a single participant (one of my grad students) for her to take and submit. How do I do this? Do I have to define her as a group and then release to only this group?
thanks,
Joel

[Thao Nghi Tu]

Hi Joel,

I believe you received assistance from my colleague through a help request but wanted to post the response on here in case others are looking to do the same thing. That is indeed how you would release an assessment to someone early. If you don’t anticipate adding/deleting questions or making too many changes, you could also use the “Exceptions to Time Limit and Delivery Date” option in the exam Settings. This allows you to make the exam available at an earlier time for individual users or Groups you have created without having to duplicate and manage multiple assessments.

Here is a tutorial on setting up timed exceptions.

[Simon Bloor]

Yes – using the exception option is the way to do this… Simon

[Michelle Haskin]

Question re: short-answer exams via the Test & Quizzes tool: is there a way to bulk upload my typed comments (“Graders Comments”) in the output file back into the assessment to give the students their feedback rather than copying/pasting comments indvidually? I’m hoping it might be similar to the bulk upload function when returning graded work in the Assignments tool.

[Thao Nghi Tu]

Hi Michelle,

Unfortunately the Tests & Quizzes tool currently doesn’t have feedback upload capability. Depending on how many students you’re adding feedback for, it may save you time to manually upload a spreadsheet with your comments and scores directly into the Gradebook instead of automatically sending scores to the Gradebook from the Tests & Quizzes tool and copying and pasting each comment. You would export the spreadsheet from your assessment, modify the spreadsheet so that it is formatted for the Gradebook and include comments, and then upload that spreadsheet as a separate Gradebook Item into the Gradebook tool. You would also need to disable automatically sending the scores from the Tests & Quizzes tool into the Gradebook so that your assessment scores don’t appear twice. Please note this option would be to provide comments for the overall assessment and not on individual questions.

There is also the PostEm tool, which is basically a spreadsheet viewer. Any feedback text you add into your spreadsheet columns will be visible to the associating student. See more information on PostEm.

Thanks,
Thao Nghi

[Michal Osterweil]

Hi ,

I am wondering if it is possible to have more questions than students are required to answer and how to do that for Tests on Sakai.
(Short and Longer essay format)

Thank you,
Michal

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