Conducting e-exams

Owned by Liisi Järve
Last updated: 12 July 2024 by Kadri Kiho
2 min read

About e-exams

When preparing and conducting exams, we recommend following the principle of trust. Students have entered the university voluntarily to acquire knowledge and are responsible for their study journey and achieving or not achieving the necessary learning outcomes. Monitoring students' activities during exams is possible with the help of modern technology, but it should remain the last choice. Rather, we encourage teachers to change assessment methods and criteria so that fact-based knowledge testing is not inevitably necessary.

If it is impossible to change the assessment methods, then the technical possibilities for monitoring students' exam performance can be found here.

General recommendations

Prefer the options already available in the Moodle learning environment:

  • Test

  • Task

  • BigBlueButton webinar tool for oral exams or presentations

  1. To check the achievement of learning outcomes use assessment methods alternative to the fact-based test, such as an essay, oral exam, and final grade as a summary of the submission of different works.

  2. Use collaborative tasks and group work as a form of assessment.

  3. Allow students to use materials in exams (open-book exams).

  4. Create a comprehensive question bank containing different questions to use in a test.

  5. Use an essay-type question in the test, where the solution of some of the previous answers must be argued.

  6. Use a time limit and a random question type to create tests - each student will receive a unique test.

  7. For tests with computational tasks, use the questions with automatically changing parameters.

  8. Ask the student to do the calculations on paper, take pictures and present them in Moodle. Scanning worksheets with your phone (iOS, Android)

  9. Compare the exam results with the results of previous tests. If in doubt, validate the exam results with an oral interview with the student - inform students about this possibility in advance.

  10. Add a confidence clause as the first question in the test - eg "I confirm that I will take the test independently without any outside help" or use the Moodle activity Choice (the student will only be able to access the test if he/she has agreed to the conditions).

  11. To avoid technical problems, create sample tests or a sample exam with fictional questions that students can take unlimited times.

  12. It may not be possible to conduct all subjects in e-learning (practicums, subjects where during the semester all study activities take place in laboratories or simulation rooms, and study activities are largely carried out in computer classes with licensed software). In this case, the teacher must be clever to support the achievement of learning outcomes by alternative methods or conduct teaching in an auditory manner according to the current emergency instructions.



Additional guidelines