Mini guides

EXAM Moodle

1. What is EXAM Moodle?
2. How is EXAM Moodle different to regular Moodle?
3. What is meant by exam?
4. What is meant by current time and location?
5. What is exam review?
6. How is the EXAM Moodle login page different?
7. How is the EXAM Moodle course different?
8. How is the EXAM Moodle Quiz settings different?
9. How is the EXAM Moodle Edit quiz page different?
10. How are the EXAM Moodle Group override and User override pages different?
11. How is the EXAM Moodle Results page different?
12. How are EXAM Moodle Statistics different?
13. How is the EXAM Moodle Manual grading page different?
14. How are EXAM Moodle roles different to HUJI Moodle roles?
15. How is the EXAM Moodle quiz attempt different?
16. How is the EXAM Moodle quiz review page different?
17. What facilities are there for communicating with students during an exam?
18. How are the Extension roles assigned?
19. How can I...?
     ...Know what exams there are today, or over some other period of time, or what exams are currently open?
     ...Know what exams a particular student has today, or over some other period of time?
     ...Quickly give a time extension to a student during an exam or shortly after it?
     ...Do a sanity check on my Gang questions?
     ...Check if there are any external links
20. How can I import grades from EXAM Moodle into HUJI Moodle?
21. What is a BYOD exam?
22. What is SEB?
23. How do I require students to use SEB
24. What is SEB with HUJI configuration?
25. Does requiring SEB with HUJI configuration provide sufficient security for BYOD exams?
26. How can one ensure that students do not take a BYOD exam some place else?
27. How can I prevent students allowing a remote agent to control their laptops?
28. What if some students will be taking the exam on workstations and others on their own laptops?
29. Why can't a student do his exam?
30. What if a student has more than one exam?
31. What if Max questions to grade is set and an Essay question was unintentionally answered?
32. How can I use EXAM Moodle to enable students to take regular pen-and-paper exams remotely?
33. How can I use the Assignment PDF editor on files uploaded to Essays?
34. How can I prevent a particular student from reviewing his exam?


Under construction...


General



What is EXAM Moodle?
EXAM Moodle is a variation of Moodle that, from the point of view of a student, behaves like an exam system.
It was developed at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI).
Exams are based on Moodle quizzes.


How is EXAM Moodle different to regular Moodle?
Guest access is not allowed.
If the user has an exam at the current time and location, he is redirected to the exam.
(If the exam requires SEB, or SEB with HUJI configuration, and he is not using it, he is instead thrown out with an appropriate message.)
Otherwise, if he used the special review URL, and he has exams that have been graded and released for review, he is taken to the review page. See below.
Otherwise, if has a privileged role in any courses, EXAM Moodle behaves as a regular Moodle - but only those courses effectively exist.
Otherwise, he is thrown out with an appropriate message. (The message includes information on exams that he has that day and extensions that he is entitled to.)
Note: Ordinary access restrictions to courses and modules (other than those noted in this page) are irrelevent for unprivileged users.


What is meant by exam?
An exam is a quiz which has been marked as Active.
In flex courses, students register to take the an exam at a time of their choosing.
(Registration is through RishumNet. Currently, a few courses in the faculty of Natural Sciences are flex courses.)
In flex courses, the Moed must be set
In other courses, the time of the exam (i.e. Opening time and either Closing time or Time limit) must be set


What is meant by current time and location?
In order to be marked active, a quiz must have
    • In flex courses: A Moed and Time limit.
      A user is considered to have an exam at the current time if he has registered to take an exam in that course/moed and and it is not more than an hour after his registration time, or he has already begin the quiz that day, and the quiz Time limit has not elapsed.
      The quiz Time limit can be overridden
    • In other courses: An Opening time and either a Closing time or a Time limit.
      A user is considered to have an exam at the current time if there is a quiz in a course to which he is enrolled as a student, and it is not more than the Start delay after the quiz Opening time, or he has already begin the quiz that day, and the quiz finishing time or Time limit has not elapsed.
      The quiz Opening time, Closing time and Time limit can all be overridden
  1. A network restriction (i.e. Require subnets must be set)
    Require subnets can be a combination of IPs, IP ranges, rooms and WIFIs
    (A room or WIFI is effectively a list of IPs. EXAM Moodle knows about most rooms that are used for exams on the various HUJI campuses. The only WIFI currently supported is exams-test.)
    A user is considered to have an exam at the current location if Require subnets is set and his IP complies with it.
    Unlike in regular Moodle, Require subnets can be overridden.
    Note: If, for whatever reason, a network restriction cannot be set then a password must be set instead.


What is exam review?
The teacher can release the exam for review.
A student can view all his exams that have been released for review at http://exam2.cs.huji.ac.il/review.
Note: A student never has access to anything in EXAM Moodle other than exams that have been released for review (and, of course, his current quiz attempt, if any).
See How is the EXAM Moodle review page different?



How is EXAM Moodle different to regular Moodle?



How is the EXAM Moodle login page different?
  • There is no option to Remember username
  • If the IP is in a known room, or an a known WIFI, the name of the room or WIFI is shown
  • If the IP is in a room, or an a WIFI, for which there is a pre-configured SEB key, a warning is shown if the version of SEB is incorrect, or the SEB key is incorrect or not the current version.
  • If the SEB key is correct, there is a Quit SEB link. If the SEB key is not the current version, there is a Try to quit SEB link
  • There is a link to the review page. It is clearly indicated if that is the current page.


How is the EXAM Moodle course different?
  • In the Course settings:
    • All irrelevant options are hidden
    • There is a Force editor option. Used to force the use of TinyMCE in exams that require auto wordcount
    • Besides that, only Force language and Access key for test users can be changed
  • The Add an activity or resource link is replaced by an Add a quiz link.
  • Sections cannot be edited - only renamed, highlighted, added and deleted
  • There is no News forum
  • Notifications and messaging are disabled
  • Group mode is always Separate groups
  • Only quizzes can be imported or restored. (Assignments can be created using the Essay question to Assignment utility. See below)
  • Only Coordinators can duplicate quizzes. Attempting to duplicate opens a confirmation dialog explaining the dangers and how to circumvent them. (Implemented also in HUJI Moodle.)
  • The quiz index page optionally shows also group and user overrides. Whether exam is Active and Opening time and Time limit are also shown.
    (Implemented also in HUJI Moodle except for Time limit)


How is the EXAM Moodle Quiz settings different?
Only settings relevant to an exam that is intended to be taken in real time are available.
Settings include:
  • General
    • Name:  Not seen by students.
    • CourseAdmin assignment name:  CSE courses only. Used for grading using CourseAdmin penalties
    • Instructions:  Shown at start of exam and in popup that can be opened during the exam
  • Exam settings
    • Active exam:  Students can take the exam only if enabled
    • Moed:  Used together with the course name to name the exam
    • Supplementary documentation:  A file that can be opened in a popup during the exam
    • Enable Chat:  If enabled, a Chat box appears below the quiz navigation block. See below.
  • Timing
    • Opening time:  Required
    • Start delay:  Exam must be started within this interval of the Opening time. Default is 1 hour for flex courses and 15 minutes for others. Advanced option if default.
    • Time limit: Either a Time limit or a Closing time is required. The exam cannot continue past midnight.
    • Closing time:  If set, it should be no later than the Time limit plus the Start delay after the Opening time. Advanced option unless set
  • Reopen attempts
    • Allow students to reopen attempts:  Useful if an extension is granted after attempts have finished
  • Layout
    • New page
    • Navigation method:  If set to Sequential, the student cannot move on to next page before he has answered all the questions on the current page.
    • Shuffle sections:  If enabled, order of sections is shuffled
    • Show save button:  Useful if there are essay questions or pages with many questions.
      See section Quiz autosave of Is there an autosave feature? in the FAQ for teachers for how it interacts with autosave.
  • Question behaviour
    • Shuffle within questions:  Additonal option Yes, if shuffled in question
  • Exam review options
    • Release grades to students:  If enabled, students can review their attempt
    • Appeal subnets:  IPs from which attempts can be reviewed
    • Show only chosen answer: In Multiple choice and similar, show only the answer the student chose
    • Show also correct answer: In Multiple choice and similar, show also the correct answer
    • Show only questions with an incorrect answer:  Determines whether a student can review either all questions that he answered or only questions that he did not answer entirely correctly.
      Note: He cannot review questions that he did not answer or that were Disqualified. See below
    • Show feedback
    • Show marks and grades
  • Appearance
  • Extra restrictions on attempts
    • Declaration of honesty:  Per-faculty default decalarations. Declaration is configurable. Signature is optional
    • Require password
    • Require subnets:  Multiselect menu of rooms and WIFI networks in the various campuses that are used for exams plus a textfield for additional IPs
    • Browser security:  Includes Require use of Safe Exam Browser with HUJI Exam Browser Key
Note: Many of the settings are not available in flex courses.


How is the EXAM Moodle Edit quiz page different?
For each quiz section, one can set
  • Max questions to grade: If the student answers more than that number of questions, he is graded only on that number of questions, in the order of his layout.
    All further questions that he answered are marked as Disqualified
    Disqualified questions are not included in overall grade, averages or statistics and the student does not see them in his review.
  • Keep the highest: If more than this number of questions are graded, only this number of questions - the ones with the highest marks - are included in the overall grade
Of course, these options make sense only if all questions in the section are of equal value.
Also, Keep the highest (if set) must be less than Max questions to grade (if set) and both must be less than the number of questions in the section.
Any attempt to set any other value will be ignored.
See an example of an Edit quiz page


How are the EXAM Moodle Group override and User override pages different?
  • Start within, Require subnets (rooms/WIFIs and/or IPs) and Browser security can also be overridden
  • The student must be selected before opening the User override page.
  • The User override page lists the Closing times and Time limits that the student would receive by virtue of his Extension role (if any) and Group overrides (if any).
  • Time fields are fully validated, as on the Quiz settings page
  • If extra time has been given using the Allow extra time feature of the exams.php utility, a log of changes made using this utility is shown
  • During an exam, there is a utility on the Group override page for creating a group consisting of students currently taking the exam in one of the allowed rooms or subnets.


How is the EXAM Moodle Results page different?
  • Column Time limit shows the time limit taking into account whether the student has an Extension role (see ) and/or a Group overide or User override (see ).
    For quizzes that are already finished, it shows the time limit that was in effect during the attempt.
  • In addition to the Overall average row, there is also a Standard deviation row.
    Both do not take into account Disqualified and Unanswered questions
  • Disqualified grade_disqualified and Unanswered grade_notanswered questions are distinguished from Incorrect grade_incorrect answers
  • If there are any Essay questions in the quiz, link Grade essays (below each link Review attempt) opens a page for grading all the essays in the attempt.
    The page is similar to the Manual grading page, but is per quiz attempt rather than per question.
    It can be toggled to show all questions - not just essays.
    It can also be toggled to show question text - not just responses.
  • There are Submit selected and Unsubmit selected options in addition to the Regrade selected and Delete selected options.
Grade essays and Submit/Unsubmit selected are also implemented in HUJI Moodle


How are EXAM Moodle Statistics different?
Disqualified and Unanswered questions are not included in the calculations.
There is a notice at the top of the page saying so.


How is the EXAM Moodle Manual grading page different?
One can select questions. There are options to:
  • Print selected questions sorted by question and Print select questions sorted by student
  • Export selected questions to an Assignment. See Can I use the Assignment PDF editor on files uploaded to Essays
  • In CSE courses: Grade/Regrade selected questions to grade feedback based on CourseAdmin penalties and Export selected questions to CourseAdmin to export CourseAdmin compliant feedback


How are EXAM Moodle roles different to HUJI Moodle roles?
  • Four additional roles exist at system and course levels: Extension 25%, 40%, 50% and 100%
    A student with one of the roles automatically gets an extension on the default Time limit and Closing time and also on any Group override Time limit and Closing time.
    Such students are everywhere marked with a small superscript e.g 25.
  • Teachers and TAs see only IDs - not names, emails or pictures. This can be waived by assigning the secondary role of Unrestricted
    They can search the quiz Results page by ID prefix.
See Roles Miniguide.


How is the EXAM Moodle quiz attempt different?
  • The Start attempt/Continue attempt page shows either when the quiz will close or how much more time the student has, depending on his starting time (if he is continuing) and the Time limit and/or Closing time
    The page includes includes forms for declaration of honesty, signature and password, as appropriate, but no further information on other access restrictions
  • During a quiz attempt, the user picture is enlarged and there is no Log out link
  • The header is fixed (i.e. non-scrolling) and includes the course name and moed (if any), and Student's name, ID number and picture.
  • There is no navigation bar or footer, or any links to anywhere outside the quiz attempt (or quiz review, during review).
  • The wording is everywhere appropriate to an exam
  • There are links to the Supplementary documentation (if any) and Instructions (aka Description) on every question page. Both open as popups
  • So as to allow a student to opt not to answer a particular question, radio buttons (in e.g. Multichoice and True/False questions) can be toggled.
  • If the quiz Navigation method is Sequential, clicking on the Next page link is ineffectual until all the questions in the current page have been answered
  • The timer gradually changes from pink to red during the last five minutes. It has a Refresh button
  • There is an Announcements box and a Chat box (if Chat is enabled) below the Navigation block
  • If the student's laptop is connected through the HUJI exam WIFI network, link Recover from lost connection in the Navigation block allows the student to continue working after the WIFI connection is restored i.e. without the need to reload the page (as would be required on Windows) and thus lose unsaved answers.


How is the EXAM Moodle quiz review page different?
  • By default, a Student sees only questions that he answered and were not Disqualified, and only the answers that he chose.
    This can be changed. See question How is the EXAM Moodle Quiz settings different?
  • Both Teacher and Student can toggle between paged and unpaged views of the quiz.
    In the Student view, empty pages are not shown i.e the Next page or Previous page link points to the next or previous page with viewable questions.
  • A Teacher can toggle between his view and the Student view
  • There is an Announcements box and a Chat box (if Chat is enabled) below the Navigation block




Communication during an exam



What facilities are there for communicating with students during an exam?
  • Course staff can post Announcements on the Announcements/Chats page.
    Any Announcements are shown in a box below the navigation block, in both attempt and review.
    The latest announcement is highlighted.
  • If Chat is enabled, a Chat box appears below the Announcements box.
    Students can initiate chats and staff can respond, during both attempt and review
    A chat is unique to an attempt.
    Staff can view all chats that await a response, and respond to them, on the Announcements/Chats page.
    If the Group mode of the quiz is set, one can choose to view the chats in any particular group
  • One can set an Alert on a question. (Field Alert text in the question Settings under Question text when Show more... is enabledqs).
    If there is an Alert, it appears in red-on-pink above the question text and the question is highlighted in pink in the quiz navigation block.
One would normally delete any Announcements and Alerts (and fix the questions) at the end of the exam.



Extension roles



How are the Extension roles assigned?
The Extension roles are automatically assigned, at system level, from information from Minhal Talmidim. They are updated daily.
Minhal Talmidim grants extensions to users for a particular year unconditionally, or per degree, semester, course, or up to a certain date.
Extensions are either 25% or 50%.
Ambiguities are resolved as follows:
  • If a date is specified, there is no extension after that date
  • If both semester and course are specified, the semester is ignored
  • Otherwise, if the semester is specified, the extension is for all that semester's courses (regardless of the date of the exam)
  • If the degree is specified, it is invariably the student's degree in that year and is therefore irrelevant
There are equivalent Extension roles that can be assigned at course level.



Other utilities



How can I...?
...Know what exams there are today, or over some other period of time, or what exams are currently open?
Use the exams.php utility. (Also available as item Exams under Reports in the Site administration block.
...Know what exams a particular student has today, or over some other period of time?
Search for the student in the exams.php utility.
...Quickly give a time extension to a student during an exam or shortly after it?
Click on link Allow more time in the above utility. When necessary, reopens the quiz. Shows a log of all changes.
(Requires no knowledge of how Overrides work or what what Overrides apply to the student.)
...Do a sanity check on my Gang questions?
Use the gangs.php utility.
...Check if there are any external links
Use the external_links.php utility.

Note: These utilities are available also in HUJI Moodle.


How can I import grades from EXAM Moodle into HUJI Moodle?
Use the EXAM Moodle import type in the HUJI Moodle Gradebook.



BYOD



What is a BYOD exam?
BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device.
In the case of an exam, it implies that students will be allowed to take the exam on their own personal laptops.


What is SEB?
SEB stands for Safe Exam Browser SEBIcon_40_2x.png.
It is an application that is available for Windows and MacOS.
It is essentially a full-screen web-browser that opens on a pre-configured URL - in our case EXAM Moodle.
By default, the browser has no navigation menus and keyboard shortcuts (such as Back and Forward). Also system control by keyboard and mouse is disabled.
SEB (or equivalent) should be used for all exams - regular and BYOD.


How do I require students to use SEB
To force students to use SEB, select one of the Require the user of Safe Exam Browser options from the Browser security menu in the quiz or override settings.
If in all the exam workstations, SEB will be running and students won't be able to quit it, it is not strictly necessary to set the Browser security.
However, in a BYOD exam, it is absolutely essential.
Students should configure their SEB with Start URL https://exam2.cs.huji.ac.il.
However, SEB has many other configuration options. For proper security in BYOD exams, students should use SEB with the HUJI configuration.
See next question.


What is SEB with HUJI configuration?
To save students the trouble of configuring SEB on their laptops, and also to ensure that they cannot exit SEB during the exam
(or allow themselves to navigate outside their exam, or view files that are not part of their exam)
they should be required to use SEB with the HUJI configuration
To do so, simply select Require the use of Safe Exam Browser with HUJI Exam Browser Keys from the Browser security menu.
Prior to the exam, students should have installed and tested SEB on their laptops according to the instructions under BYOD on the frontpage of Moodle.


Does requiring SEB with HUJI configuration provide sufficient security for BYOD exams?
No! It does not ensure that students are not taking the exam some place else.
It also does not prevent a remote agent controlling students' laptops.
See the next two questions.


How can one ensure that students do not take a BYOD exam some place else?
To ensure that the students do not begin the exam (or take it entirely) some place else:
  • Students are not allowed to enter the exam room after the Opening time
    During the exam, the invigilator makes a note of the student ID shown in the header of the EXAM Moodle window on each laptop.
    It is later checked that no other students took the exam.
    Or...
  • Require password is set.
    The password is announced only after all students have opened SEB and authenticated to EXAM Moodle.
    The time at which the password is announced is noted and it is later checked that no student authenticated after that time.
    (This assumes that students cannot communicate by mobile phone or other device.)
To ensure that students do not continue the exam some place else:
  • When a student wishes to leave the room, the invigilator makes a note of his Student ID and the time.
    The time is later checked against the time that Moodle shows the student submitted.
    Better still, the invigilator checks that Moodle shows the student has submitted.
    Or...
  • A Closing time is set.
    Students are not allowed to leave the room before the Closing time
To ensure that an accomplice does not assist during the exam:
  • It is checked that no student changed IP.


How can I prevent students allowing a remote agent to control their laptops?
You should set Require subnets to EXAM net (exams-test) and instruct students to connect to the exams-test network.
The network is available everywhere on campus. So it doesn't provide a solution to the problem posed in the previous question.
However, the only IP/port it connects with is that of the EXAM Moodle server (http://exam2.cs.huji.ac.il)
So it prevents communication with all other agents.
Note: If there is an image in the quiz instructions, or in any of the questions, that is hosted on another site, it will not be displayed.
(A utility is available to list all links and images in a quiz to external sites.)


What if some students will be taking the exam on workstations and others on their own laptops?
Either set Require subnets to a combination or rooms and WIFIs.
Or create a Moodle group and Group override for just the BYOD students.



Troubleshooting



Why can't a student do his exam?
If a student is thrown out with message Sorry! You do not have an exam scheduled at this time and location, it could be because:
  • Option Active quiz has not been enabled
  • He is not in one of the rooms selected, or his IP is not in the list in section Require subnets
  • The student has not yet started his exam and either more than an hour has elapsed since the quiz Opening time or it is after the Closing time
  • There is a Group override for a group to which he belongs, or he has a User override, which overrides one of the above two items
  • He is not enrolled to the course (or is not registered to an exam in a flex course).
  • If he is trying to review his exams and is not using the exact URL http://exam2.cs.huji.ac.il/review. See next question
Note: During the first few weeks of the semester, if the student does not have an exam at the current time and location, he is redirected to the previous year's EXAM Moodle.
Thus if he does not have an exam in that year's EXAM Moodle either, the message ultimately comes from the previous year's EXAM Moodle.



FAQ



What if a student has more than one exam?
If according to course enrolment (or exam registration for flex courses) and the quiz Opening time and Closing time and Require subnets (and relevant overrides, if any), a student currently has more than one exam at the current time and location, then he can chose between the exams


What if Max questions to grade is set and an Essay question was unintentionally answered?
If a grade is given to a later question that was originally marked as Disqualified, it will no longer be considered Disqualified.
However, the unintentionally answered question must be given a grade of zero and both that question and the later one that was originally disqualified will be included in the statistics.
Note 1: Simply adding a comment to a Disqualified question does not change its state.
Note 2: If a grade was given to a disqualified question, the question's original state can be restored by removing the grade and regrading.


How can I use EXAM Moodle to enable students to take regular pen-and-paper exams remotely?
  • Create a quiz configured as follows:
    • Instructions: General instructions plus instructions for scanning and uploading? See below.
    • Active exam: Yes
    • Enable chat: Yes - enable to allow students to communicate with you during the exam
    • Opening time: As for the onsite-exam
    • Time limit: As for the onsite-exam plus allowance for scanning and uploading
    • Declaration of honesty: Required
    • Browser security: Full screen pop-up with some JavaScript security if you expect scanned files, None if Word files
  • Add a single Essay question configured as follows:
    • Question text: An image of the exam question paper
    • Response format: No online text
    • Allow attachments: 1 or Unlimited (to save combining pages into a single PDF)
    • Require attachments: 1
    • Accepted file types:
      • jpg - quick and easy but insufficient quality
      • pdf - requires a scanning app such as Camscanner, Adobe Scan, MicroSoft Office Lens or Google drive.
        Most scanning apps can combine several pages into a single PDF
      • doc - for documents written on Word, or
      • A combination of the above
  • During the exam, check for new messages from students under Announcements/Chats.
    See What facilities are there for communicating with students during an exam? above
    Consider how to communicate with students before they start the exam and after they have finished.
There is a demo available to practice uploading files to EXAM Moodle from your mobile.
Prepare your demo exam at https://exam2.cs.huji.ac.il/uploademo.



How can I use the Assignment PDF editor on files uploaded to Essays?
  • On the Manual grading page, select one or more Essay questions and click on Export selected questions to Assignments.
    A new Assignment is created for each question exported (unless the question has already been exported).
    The Assignment's name is a concatenation of the Quiz name and the question name.
    A submission is created for each student who answered the question. (Or each student who answered the question since the previous export of that question.)
    The submission includes all uploaded files, as well as any text entered in the editor.
After grading:
  • On the Manual grading page, select one or more Essay questions and click on Import selected questions from Assignments.
    Feedback files, comments and grades are imported back from the Assignment to the Essay question
Of course, one can use any of Assignment features: Offline grading, Advanced grading, plagiarism checking using Originality etc.
In particular, PDF files and Word documents can be graded using the Assignment's built-in editor.



How can I prevent a particular student from reviewing his exam?
Assign him the role of On hold in the quiz as follows:
  • In the Quiz administration block, click on Locally assigned roles
  • Click on On hold
  • Enter the student's ID in the search box below the Potential users panel and click on Search
  • Click on the ◄ Add button between the panels