Digital exams – what it is, how it works and how to get started

Who we are

Online Partner is Google for Education premier partner active in Sweden and the Scandinavian countries. We are specialized in Google’s cloud-based solutions and have helped over 1000 customers to become successful users of Google Workspace in schools and companies. We are at the forefront of digital tools and pedagogy based on Google for Education.

About digital exams

Our definition of a digital exam is any exam that needs some sort of computerised support or enhancement to solve a problem that analogue exams can’t.

In its least developed design, you could use a computer just to type in the exam answers in a document or notepad, making it easier for the teacher to proofread. This may be enough for some, but there are many more ways for teachers to be creative and students to excel and show the knowledge they have acquired.

A platform that makes it possible for teachers to tailor exams for every unique student also supports the understanding of the behaviour of the student while they are writing the exam. These insights can be used to enhance the students future learning.

Why digital exams?

There are several reasons to start using tools for digital examinations.

Digital exams create equal opportunity for students

One major request from administrators, school managers and teachers is the ability to anonymize exams. Many students feel that they are unfairly treated on exams. However, digital exams can be done completely anonymously which means the assessor has no knowledge about the person who submitted the exam. Exams can be graded by other teachers, who don’t even need to be familiar with the student.

Easier to write, easier to proof-read

What are being assessed – spelling, content or handwriting? With digital exams the computer can correct spelling mistakes, use text-to-speech and in some cases , speech-to-text. With a text editor, the student can focus on the content of the exam instead of losing energy and focus on the pencil and handwriting. The digital creation process doesn’t just make it easier to write, it also provides the student with a better overview and enables the student to re-shape the content.

Supports several question types

A digital exam doesn’t have the same boundaries as paper, and it’s possible to create lots of different question types, such as multiple choice, scale, math equations. The most common one is the essay type where the student gets a blank or pre-filled text editor.

Mulitmodal exams with resources

As a teacher or administrator you can add new resources such as video and audio. What could you do if the student was able to calculate or draw graphs or symbols?

For example, you could create exams where the students can listen to different animal sounds and pair those to images.

Saves time

One additional benefit of digital exams is that it saves time for the teachers. Teachers always have limited time, trying to make the most of it. With digital exams the teacher saves time when planning, executing and grading. A teacher can create, duplicate and share their exams with their colleagues. And since all exams are stored digitally, the post work of providing feedback and grading are much easier. The end result can easily be shared back to the student and/or the legal guardians.

Remote exams

When choosing the right solution for digital exams including computers and hardware, it’s also possible to run safe and cheat free digital exams online students are at home.

What you need to get started with digital exams?

Computer access

The first thing that needs to be ensured is access to some kind of computer device for reading and writing the exam. The number of devices you have access to will be the most crucial factor for your exam setup. Will you be able to have one computer per student or use a computer lab and split the students over a day or two?

Internet or wifi access

Make sure you have stable access to the wifi network and or Internet. One easy way to evaluate weaknesses in your network is to play a full high definition Youtube video with some kind of music and then walk around in the classroom or facility where you intend to do the exam. If the music breaks up or completely stops, you have issues that need to be solved. A full HD Youtube video requires roughly 4 to 5 Megabit per second.

Computer operating system

All computers and operating systems have different conditions and advantages when it comes to running exams. If you don’t already know, make an inventory of the percentages of device & operating systems in your organization.

• iOS
• Mac OSX
• Windows 10
• Chrome OS (Chromebooks)

The purpose of computers and operating systems is to provide as many tools and features as possible to support the user. However, in an exam situation the opposite is true, the student is supposed to only get the tools they are allowed to use.

Some operating systems have limited built in functionality for lockdown while others don’t. If you use 3rd party software or mobile device management software to manage your device fleet, it may support lockdown. We suggest you investigate that.

One method to lockdown computers is “Safe exam browser”, a freeware software licensed under the Mozilla Public license. The software uses a configuration file to lockdown the computer and only provide access to the resources of your choice. “Safe exam browser” is not a complete exam solution, it’s just a lockdown security function.

Finally, let’s discuss Chrome OS, the operating system in Chromebooks. Chrome OS is the most optimal for the purpose of secure digital exams. Chrome OS was built with security in mind from day one. It’s so secure that Google has created a bug bounty program. There is a $ 150 000 reward for those who can hack the Chrome OS.

Control the exam environment #1

Now we have the foundation to run digital exams. The final piece is a software to run inside the locked down environment. Depending on your requirements, there are many solutions to choose from.

The first requirement to evaluate is: are you required by law or by a government organization to use a specific software?

In Sweden for example, the government will provide a mandatory exam software in 2023 for high stakes nation wide exams. Between 2018 and 2023 they require by law the schools to use digital exam software. The choice of software is open for the schools to choose, but they need to follow certain minimum requirements. For low stakes, daily exams, there are no requirements and they will not provide software.

The second requirement to evaluate is: has your organization already bought or chosen an exam software, or are you in any other way limited in your choice of software?

Control the exam environment #2

If you are free to choose any solution, these are examples of common questions to evaluate:

• Does the software support the operating system and hardware that I got in my organization?
• What kind of exams or question types do I need? Only essay or multiple choice or other more complex types?
• How will I distribute the questions; in the exam app or on paper?
• What languages do I need for teachers and students?
• What level of security is required?
• How can you limit or restrict cheating when students are un-attended?
• How can you see and support students during the exam?
• Are there any students that need accessibility assistance or functionality?
• Do we need the ability to run the exam offline?
• How will the students and teachers sign into the application; with user-name and password, with the Google account or a SSO solution?
• How much training is required and how long will it take for a teacher to get started with the first exam?
• Do we need any special agreements, for example Data Processing Agreement required like GDPR under the EU (European Union)law?
• What is the price for the complete exam solution including computers and licenses?

Our experience is that most of you are thinking; Can I get everything I need for free?

Probably not. How much functionality can you get for free?

Control the exam environment #3

We will use a Chromebook with Chrome Upgrade license as an example for look into cost and functionality.

The first category is called “hacks”. They can be found on blogs and forums where teachers discuss Chromebooks, for example the Google Educator Groups.

Hacks utilize the built-in kiosk functionality of Chrome OS and additional Chrome policies to limit the access to the Internet or more specifically only to access some online text editor.

This often solves the task for the one who created the hack, but his or her requirements are probably not the same as yours. When you need to scale the solution, new requirements from your colleagues or management makes the hack fall apart.

In 2019, Google released “Google Forms locked mode”, a new functionality in Google Forms, only available to managed Chromebooks. You use Google Forms and when the student starts the locked down quiz, all other browser tabs are closed during the quiz. This is a very secure solution and very easy to use and administrate.

We categorise the remainder of exam softwares as some sort of commercial application. Some are add-ons to LMS systems and some are stand alone applications. In general the LMS system software has great integrations but often lacks many other important features.

If you are evaluating stand alone commercial software, make sure you get an accurate idea of how much time each teacher needs to learn and spend on each exam – this is the single biggest cost of any solution. Everyone wants to avoid tedious tasks, so pay attention to how users are created and managed in the system. How does the user sign into the application? How is the post work handled? How much time in addition to regular working hours does the teachers have to spend for administration?

Adding more qualified information

On the topic of security, our opinion is: Nothing can by definition be 100% secure. Your task is to make it as hard as possible to cheat using as little human resources as possible.

Recent studies in Sweden showed an alarming increase of cheating. Plagiarism is the most common type of cheat. If you don’t already got an anti-plagiarism software, we suggest you evaluate Ouriginal – formerly known as urkund.com

To conclude this section. The best choice of exam solution is the one that best fits your specific needs and requirements!

Tips & Tricks – How to succeed with digital exams

• Create routines to make sure computers are fully charged
• Make sure to run som mock exams before important exams, so teachers and students are comfortable with the solution
• Invest in, and verify wifi infrastructure.
• What happens if the Internet is unavailable during exam, create a plan B!
• Do your students need extra assistance before, during or after the exam?
• Are there any special requirements for archiving the exams?
• Will the exam take place in the classroom or remotely?

Gothenburg – a digital examination solution for 55 000 students

The Problem

In 2016, Online Partner was contacted by the City of Gothenburg. They had tried several “hacks” and evaluated several exam softwares. There were three main pain points not solved by the evaluated solutions. We were asked to create a proof of concept that could respond to their issues:

Avoid training of staff

The teachers already had too many applications and administrative systems that they worked in- Adding another application and educating 11 000 teachers and administrators would meet a big resistance and cost in lost productivity with teachers not teaching.

No administration

All hacks and evaluated solutions required the teacher to have assistance from the IT department or a school administrator. Also, there were no resources for an application system administrator. The teachers needed to be able to manage all aspects of the exam themselves.

Cost

All evaluated solutions suffered from too high cost, either directly from license fees or indirectly from teacher administrative time or training. The cost needed to be much lower to enable a full city roll out of the solution.

Technical requirements

• Basic text formatting such as text size, bold and italic and support for 10 000 characters
• Fully automated user provisioning for more than 66 000 students
• Lockdown of internet access, to avoid cheating
• Offline cache if internet access would drop
• The device should be clean after the exam was submitted

The Solution

Online Partner accepted the challenge and in the fall of 2016, our solution went live in Gothenburg. These are the three most important components of our solution.

Avoid training of staff

We came to the conclusion that to avoid additional training, we had to use the knowledge the teachers and students already had. We decided to mimic the behaviour, navigation and design that Google uses in their applications. Google made this easy by releasing a design framework for free, including graphics and icons.

We also believe that the teacher should spend as much time as possible in their primary tool, G Suite. So we built integrations to Google Classroom, Drive, Docs, Calendar etc. The result makes it exceptionally easy to use, and most teachers don’t need any training at all.

No administration

The typical exam administration is; who should have done an exam at what time, on what topic and with what resources. With the integration to G Suite, we use the Google accounts that the organization already uses. We also use the Google account for signing into the application, this makes everything easy, familiar and requires no administration. Once the exam is finished the exam is converted into a Google Doc and stored in Google Drive. This makes it easy to find, mark and comment using your current skills and add-ons.

Cost

We can make the application long term affordable by:

• Following the Google material design interface, avoiding costly design work
• Use user-driven development where we plan and build features by requests from teachers
• We build everything on Google Cloud Platform which is secure by default, scalable and affordable.

It started as a collaboration and proof of concept and turned into a new application for digital  exams – ChromEx. Since launch, the use of ChromEx has spread all over the world and has been used to write several million exams. It is continuously developed to adapt to teachers requested improvements and adjustments and has an impressive set of features.

Lecture ”Lessons learned from over one million digital exams”

From Googles ”The anywhere school” event, by Online Partners CEO Fredrik Linnander

Learn what digital exams are and what benefits they provide. We’ll go through what you need to know to administer your first digital exams and what to avoid when you scale it for your whole school or district.