Organizing Chromebook exams
In this guide you will find important information on planning and conducting online exams with Chromebooks on the University of Konstanz campus.
We - the eLearning team - recommend that you plan your Chromebook exam as early as possible, as not all rooms are suitable: The earlier your exam is requested, the easier it is to find a room.
The steps from planning, conducting, evaluating and viewing the exam are summarized below:
1. Planning the exam
1.1. Checking the feasibility:
KIM has 128 Chromebooks in four mobile racks, which we will make available to you in the room on the scheduled date.
If there are more than 128 participants, it has shown to be a practical solution to hold the exam a) in two groups with a temporal delay and b) in two large lecture halls in the R building. These have an upper and a lower entrance, so that supervised entry can prevent participants from meeting each other. In this case, please make sure to inform the department accordingly so that it can be included in the scheduling and room planning.
>> Here you will find an overview of all rooms generally suitable for online exams.
1.2. Determining the time required for your event:
- 10-15 minutes for arrival, information, registration...
- The planned writing time
- Plan for a time buffer for possible participants requiring academic adjustments in accordance with your department, e.g. approx. 15 minutes (max. 25% of the writing time)
With a writing time of 60 minutes, a room should therefore be reserved for a minimum of approx. 85 minutes. The time between lecture sessions should not be included in the planning.
1.3. Room planning:
All lecture halls in the R building and the seminar rooms on M6 and P6 are suitable.
For online exams, only a quarter of the room capacity should be filled. If a sufficiently sized room is not available, it may be possible to hold the exam in two rooms at the same time. The person responsible in your department can check what is possible together with the room reservation service.
1.4. Requesting the exam
Request the Chromebook exam in your department by providing the following information:
- desired date(s) for a trial, main and a follow-up exam
- Type of exam (Chromebook exam)
- total duration required
- estimated number of participants
- Desired room
Your department requests the exam from the room reservation service, which reserves a suitable room.
The room reservation service will forward the reservation of the Chromebook exam to us. You will receive the links to your ILIAS exam courses from us.
2. Organizational matters
2.1. Conducting a trial exam
If you or the participants in your course have not yet taken a test on the ILIAS-exams platform, we recommend that you conduct a trial exam:
Students may
- check whether they remember their account name and password during the log-in process (and if not, contact the KIM help desk in time)
- complete the required profile information if they are using the ILIAS-exams platform for the first time
- familiarize themselves with the procedures - this will give them confidence so that they can concentrate fully on the content of the exam.
Teachers can test the functionality of their exam configuration. The trial exam should contain at least one of each of the question types used in the exam.
After the trial exam, check
- whether the set point ratings work as desired (especially for multiple-choice questions)
- whether the grading scheme works as intended.
The length of the trial exam depends on whether it is only intended as a practical test or whether you also want to use it as preparation for the content of the exam.
There are two ways to carry out a trial exam:
- in one of the last course sessions - apply for the mock exam as described above and we will provide the Chromebooks for you
- on the trial exam dates of KIM: we organize these trial exams including rooms, you only prepare the ILIAS exam course. We will be present in the room with the Chromebooks. You can attend, but you do not have to.
2.2. Availability of support personnel
For exams with a large number of participants please clarify which staff members and/or assistants can help with distributing and collecting the Chromebooks before and after the exam.
2.3. Information to the participants
Inform the participants about the procedures well in advance of the exam. For Chromebook exams, further information must be provided; you are welcome to use these text modules for this purpose:
>> Information to be sent to participants of Chromebook exams beforehand
3. Preparation in ILIAS
3.1. Preparation of the exam course
Here you will find instructions on how to configure your ILIAS exam course:
>> ILIAS/Instructions/Configuring online exams on-campus in ILIAS
If you have any questions or wish to arrange a personal meeting, please do not hesitate to contact us: ilias-support@uni-konstanz.de
3.2. Final check
A final check is essential to ensure that your exam works properly. We recommend that you carry this out together with us in order*to check whether all settings for the test and the time (including academic adjustments) are set correctly
- to discuss any content-related or organizational issues
You can find a checklist for this final inspection here: Checklist for the final inspection of ILIAS exams
Please make an appointment with us for a joint final inspection.
4. Conducting the exam
Important: The use of other digital devices (phones, smartwatches, etc.) must be strictly prohibited in the exam room!
4.1. Distributing the Chromebooks
We will be distributing (and collecting) the Chromebooks before and after the exam. For exams with a large number of participants, we kindly ask for support from your staff or assistants.
4.2. Working with Chromebooks
The Chromebooks automatically connect automatically to the WiFi when opened and start up the web browser: It is possible to log in to the exam ILIAS platform and the test is displayed.
4.3. Technical issues / protocol
At least one person from the eLearning team will be present at the start of the exam in order to help with technical questions or difficulties. You will be given a telephone number on which you can reach this person during the exam in order to receive immediate assistance.
In case of technical problems, please note the following information in the protocol: time, student number, Chromebook number, issue, type of solution, time of problem solution.
5. Evaluation and post-exam review
5.1. Evaluation
Please refer to our Guide for configuring on-site online exams in ILIAS
5.2. Post-exam review
If you would like a proctored post-exam review, please make an appointment with us.
Preparation:
- You reserve a suitable room for this (in the R building, on M6 or P6).
- You make the necessary settings in the ILIAS exam course - you can find instructions for that here:
>> Guide on configuring on-site online exams in ILIAS - Post-exam review
We will provide the Chromebooks for the event.