Guidance for setting up open book exams in Moodle

Support for Staff

This page provides information to staff regarding open book exams in Moodle.

In addition to the guidance below, you can view an example set of exams which demonstrate how different exams might look like and you can request additional help from the Digital Learning Team.

Moodle Exam Platform

Online exams will be hosted on a separate Moodle platform, available at https://exams.lancaster.ac.uk, which is linked from the students’ exam timetable.

The Exam Moodle site will look different from normal Moodle in order to clearly distinguish the two e.g. blue banner. Every exam in the timetable will have its own Moodle page, linked directly from the exam timetable.

The Exam Moodle site has been specifically configured for exams with a restricted set of activities and permissions. It will also include an announcements forum for adding notifications for students.  

Note: Once students can access their Exam space (1 week before the start time), Announcements will be highlighted on Moodle and sent via email. As of March 2024, they will also be shown on the Student Portal and sent via iLancaster. As students can turn off notifications in iLancaster, we still advise that students monitor their email for these messages.

Note: It is NOT be possible to access the Exam Moodle site through the Moodle mobile app. Students are required to access the exam page through a desktop browser.

Moodle Activity Types

There are two activities in the Exam Moodle site which can be used for online exams:

  • Assignment activity: used for either the Restricted Time Period or the timed, single-sitting exam type.
  • Quiz activity: can be used for the timed, single-sitting exam in an extended window and allows for a countdown timer, within a longer window (e.g., students can start at any point during the allocated time period but a countdown will start when the student clicks ‘attempt quiz’). The quiz activity should only be used when the answers are marked entirely by Moodle (i.e. you cannot use the ‘essay’ type question or any other question type which requires a human marker) and should ensure full randomisation of questions (i.e. no student gets exactly the same paper).

It is expected that the assignment activity will be the most common type of activity, because this supports anonymous submission and creation of Turnitin reports.

Moodle Enrolment and Groups

Each Moodle page (1 page per exam) will be created from a template with some basic universal information (including a link to the student guide, a note that BST is used in Moodle, and that ILSPs are accounted for in all deadlines which are displayed). Access will be given to staff who were in a relevant role at the point of creation and if further staff are required these can be added manually from the Participants page.

Students will be automatically enrolled at a later stage (1 week prior to the exam date) - this allows time for departments to create the exam submission activities (i.e. the assignments and quizzes) and add exam information at the top of the page.

Timings: ISLP and rest breaks

ILSPs and RBs and should only be used for timed, single-sitting exams.

Groups will be created automatically by ISS for the following conditions, taken from LUSI, to allow for ILSP and Rest Breaks:

  • ILSP [extra time]
  • ILSP [extra time] & rest breaks
  • Rest breaks (RB) An RB is calculated as 10 minutes per hour of the exam

Each ILSP condition (e.g. extra 25% or 50% etc.) will be a separate group, and will also have an extra ILSP&RB group alongside it (e.g. ILSP25, ILSP25&RB; ILSP50, ILSP50&RB etc.). Students will be automatically assigned to the correct group according to data held about them in LUSI.

The relevant coversheets for students with an ILSP will be automatically appended to the exam papers as it does for LU modules (modules.lancaster).

Setting up the exam space in Moodle 

The following steps apply to restricted time period and timed single sitting exams and for all students.

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Marking and Grading

Further information on marking and grading is available in the Online assessment and feedback for assignments in Moodle online course.

Also see the ‘examination settings’ section above to see how the assignment has been setup and what options are available.

Marking

There are 2 methods for marking papers: Annotate PDF (the Moodle online version of the paper) and download and annotate locally (using Word or Adobe PDF to add any comments).

Annotate PDF and Feedback comments are off by default in the assignment settings (feedback types), but can be switched on at any stage. It is recommended that you enforce PDF uploads if you want to use the ‘annotate PDF’/ Moodle online version for marking.

Rubrics and marking guides are off by default in the assignment settings (grade) but can be switched on at any stage.

Note that if you change to a different grading method after marking has commenced, you will be warned that you may lose grading that has already been completed with the ‘simple direct grading’ method.

Grading: handling grades

There are two methods for handling grades – online in Moodle, or offline on a spreadsheet (‘marking worksheet’).

Note that Moodle can only accept 1 grade per assignment/ submission area. If you need to have multiple grades for a submission, you will need to split into two submission areas, or grade offline using a spreadsheet.

If you choose to mark offline with a spreadsheet, departmental (PS) staff can download a ‘grading worksheet’ from the assignment activity in Moodle and remove all columns with identifying information, leaving just the Moodle participant number included in the markers’ zip download. Markers should add the grade into this spreadsheet which is emailed back to the department for processing in LUSI.

If you choose to mark online you can put a single grade into the grade area in Moodle, which can be downloaded later by PS staff.

Note: if using rubrics or marking guides to mark papers, then Moodle will still only record a single grade for each assignment. There is no method to download the breakdown of rubric scores or marking guide criteria sub-scores as an excel spreadsheet.