These observations have been compiled from our lessons learned when providing support across the institution.
Specific assessment processes vary between schools, you should contact your Local School Contact for advice, before creating or updating assessments.
Consider the student point of view for the assessment - change your role to student and preview the assignment or quiz. Enrol yourself or a colleague as a student, and log in with this account to test the assessment.
What will be the alternative if the technology fails? This could happen to one student, or a cohort, so there should be a back up in place if they are unable to complete the assessment in QMplus.
Communication is vital.
For summative assessment, contact telt@qmul.ac.uk or raise a ticket with the assessment details at least 2 weeks before (date, time, module code, link to assessment). Especially if the assessment will take place outside of peak exam period.
It is good practice for students to take screenshots (of their final submission or of any issues or errors if they get any) and to include the clock in the screen shot - this is advised even if they have successfully submitted, in case they need to provide any evidence. Please advise your students to take screenshots (although please note that students may be in different time zones - so please ask them to consider this when taking the screenshot).
Instruct students to check their web browsers are up to date before any summative assessments / exams. Let them know that they can check if their browser is up to date.
It is tempting to enrol all students from one school or programme onto 1 QMplus course exam area, and while this is possible, we strongly discourage this. We recommend that exams are set up in their respective module areas as opposed to trying to create 1 QMplus area with multiple exams in it - this is to prevent potential load issues. Similarly, we recommend that you limit the number of assessments on one page, to avoid page load issues.
It is possible to set up various restrictions on QMplus activities - such as date and time restrictions, groups and user restrictions, grade and activity completion restrictions. These restrictions will prevent participants from being able to view or complete the activity depending on the permissions allowed. More information on restricting access settings. We recommend that you limit the number of restrictions to avoid page load issues.
Reducing QMplus traffic at one time will benefit everyone. During peak times, such as the start of a term or exam season, QMplus experiences extremely high activity load, which has the potential to slow things down, depending on the types of activities taking place.
If the QMplus assessment is taking place in a QM lab or in-person, check that the PCs are in good working order, that students will be able to log in and use QMplus and that any other software that students will use has been checked and confirmed as working. We recommend raising a ticket with the ITS Helpdesk and asking for Campus Customer Support to assist with this before the assessment (with sufficient lead time).
It is important that students understand how to properly reference their work and that they should be submitting their own work. There should be clear guidelines in the instructions indicating what is acceptable to use and what is not. We recommend that you switch on features within the QMplus assessment that ask students to confirm that the work they are submitting in their own. You can also direct students to the Academic Integrity course to learn more about this topic.
TELT Recommends: If using Turnitin, it must be enabled before any submissions start to avoid complications later, as it cannot be turned on after students have started to submit. If not, then a new submission point may need to be set up for all students.
Also, communicate your decision to students on whether or not you will be using Turnitin.
TELT Recommends: Allow students to see their Turnitin reports so that they can learn from it. Communicate to your students whether or not they will be able to see the report before their final submission.
TELT Recommends: Ensure that students are aware of how many attempts they will have and ensure they are aware of what format submissions should be made in (e.g. PDF). If you are using Turnitin, use the assignment setting to ensure students only submit in a format that is accepted by Turnitin.
TELT Recommends: Allow for at least 2 documents so that students can submit cover sheets or supporting documents.
TELT Recommends: If you want to do anonymous marking, be sure to turn this setting on before submissions start - you won't be able to do this once students have started to submit. Once ready, remember to reveal the identities.
TELT Recommends: Although it is possible to copy an assignment, we recommend that you create assignments from scratch, rather than duplicating, to avoid issues.
TELT Recommends: Give students extra time to submit after the due date, in case something goes wrong. This is done via the 'cut off date' in the assignment settings. Students submitting after the due date will be flagged as late - you can decide what to do with late submissions. If there is no grace period, students will not be able to submit after the due date. Allowing late submissions gives the added flexibility.
TELT Recommends: If you would like students to read a submission statement and formally confirm their submission, then keep the assignment setting 'Require students to click the submit button' in the default position of 'yes'.
In this case, please let the students know that they must click the Submit button to submit their assignment.
TELT Recommends: If you would like students to be able to upload their assignment and for it to be automatically submitted and for them to be able to continue to make edits until the submission deadline, then change the same setting to 'no'.
In this case, please let the students know that they will no longer be able to edit after the submission deadline.
More information on this setting can be found in the QMplus Assignments - the submit button article.
TELT Recommends: To save time in future, consider saving questions in the question bank. You can then add questions to different categories so that they are easy to locate later. The Moodle Docs Question Bank webpage has more information.
You can shuffle the questions from the question bank so that the quiz will have different questions for each student.
TELT Recommends: Sometimes the sequential option confuses students and, if only one attempt is permitted, they can waste it by skipping ahead. Be sure to communicate clearly to students if using the Sequential navigation option and remind them that they won't be able to return to a previous question. We would also recommend ensuring that students do a practice test beforehand so that they know how the real test will work.
TELT Recommends: Keep the 'shuffle questions' option set to Yes, making it more challenging for collusion. With this option, the questions in the quiz are in a different order for each quiz attempt.
Selecting random questions from the question bank is useful as the questions on each quiz will be different for each attempt.
TELT Recommends: Although it is possible to copy a quiz, we recommend that you create quizzes from scratch, rather than copying or duplicating the quiz, to avoid issues.
TELT Recommends: Have a wide window within which students can complete a shorter quiz. For example, the quiz is available for a 6 hour window, but students only have 60 minutes once started. Having a wider window means that less students will be going to the quiz at the same time, thus reducing QMplus load.
TELT Recommends: Limit to one question per page, where possible. You can add more questions on 1 page, but it risks students missing a question.
By default, the quiz is set to require students to click a submit button before the time expires, or their attempt will not count.
TELT Recommends: Change this default setting to 'open attempts are submitted automatically' when the time expires. This way, once the time is up, QMplus will automatically submit any answers that the student has already saved. If the quiz is not set to automatically submit, students may lose their whole attempt.
For more information, why not have a look at the article on QMplus Quizzes - what happens when the time expires?
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