ExamOnline Case Studies

The University of Dundee

Key points:

• The University of Dundee license ExamOnline for up to 3,000 students per year.
• Up to 150 students at a time sit high stakes summative examinations using the system.
• The examinations are almost exclusively composed of extended answer questions which are subsequently human marked, either on-screen or after exporting to PDF.

In 2010 the University of Dundee (in response to requests from academics and students) was looking for a system which would enable them to move extended answer and essay examinations on-screen. After carrying out a review of available systems, the University, which is experienced in the use of online assessment systems and is a long time Questionmark Perception (QMP) user, selected ExamOnline to address this specific demand.

After an initial pilot, the University’s use of ExamOnline has grown each year. Today the University license ExamOnline for up to 3,000 students and runs examinations in the College of Art, Science & Engineering, the College of Arts & Social Sciences, and the College of Life Sciences.

Please let us know if you would like to speak to someone at the University of Dundee about how they use ExamOnline.

The University of Birmingham

Key points:

• The School of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham run more than 50 MSc engineering examination sessions a year on ExamOnline, each exam session typically with 20 to 50 candidates.
• Exams include automatically marked questions, short essay questions and long essay questions.
• Candidates also complete and submit hand-drawn sketches which are uploaded and marked online.
• Exam locations include Birmingham, Dublin, Singapore, New York and Toronto.

The MSc in Railway Systems Engineering and Integration (RSEI) course at the University of Birmingham is a postgraduate programme with an MBA flavour, blending engineering with economics and strategy. The course consists of 8 taught modules of one week’s duration, and each module is summatively assessed. Originally the course was assessed using pen and paper tests – 30 extended answer questions to be answered in 75 minutes. However the course director had become concerned with “reducing or removing the more undesirable aspects of subjective marking”, as well as “removing the (possibly subconscious) influence on marking of increasingly poor handwriting and spelling”.

All end of module and year-end examinations are now delivered on ExamOnline. Exams include automatically marked questions, and short and long essay questions which require human marking. Candidates can also submit hand-drawn sketches as part of an online examination – the sketches are scanned and uploaded to ExamOnline, are automatically embedded into candidate answers, and can be marked on-screen. ExamOnline’s blind on-screen marking is deemed both fairer and more efficient than marking of paper scripts.

Please let us know if you would like to speak to someone at the University of Birmingham about how they use ExamOnline.
 

The University of Oxford

Key points:

• The Centre for Research on Dissemination at Oxford (CREDO) funded by the Wellcome Trust use ExamOnline to deliver a series of assessments related to their research on scalable training.
• They selected ExamOnline after a short pilot because they found it intuitive to use, and because of the “excellent and personalised” support they received.

The original Wellcome funded Centre for Research on Eating Disorders at the University of Oxford (CREDO) has been responsible for the development and evaluation of many of the leading treatments for adults with eating disorders. Their current dissemination research involves the development and testing of scalable and cost-effective methods for training therapists in evidence-based psychological treatments, together with new ways of assessing therapist competence. To administer their online tests of competence they needed a web-based system which was robust, reliable and easy to use. After a brief pilot, they selected ExamOnline, because they found it intuitive to create and deliver questions and tests. They also liked the fact that ExamOnline allows you to include information pages (including images) in the tests, which is a requirement for CREDO’s information rich content.