Richard Young, Assistant Director Solution Development and E-Learning, from IT Services, shares an update on the work being done by ITS, the Exams Office and FMD faculties to create a new Exam Playbook for May 2024, and some infrastructural updates to make sure current platforms meet requirements for a smooth learner experience.
The pandemic dramatically accelerated the existing transition from in person paper-based exams to online exams. For a period, all exams took place online and remotely. The most used exam platform at Queen Mary is QMPlus, but Rogo is also used for key exams in IHSE.
Ensuring an excellent experience for students, support staff and invigilators during a high stress exam period is critical, and the technology did not always enable that experience. In January 2023, a few exams were blighted by systems issues, and it was no comfort to those affected that they were in a small minority.
Therefore, during 2023, ITS collaborated with the Exams Office to create an “Online Exams Playbook” that sets out best practice in preparing for the exam season. At the same time, QMplus was upgraded, partly with the goal of improving performance and stability.
Other improvements during 2023 include performance testing of MCQ exams for large cohorts of students, smoothing the schedule of online exams to avoid very high numbers of simultaneous logons and better advertising the support available from ITS for those running online exams in PC Labs.
The online exams in January 2024 went very smoothly, with no slowdown in QMplus performance when under extreme load when exams started. However, there were some issues with PCs for a small number of exams that took place in one of the PC Labs.
ITS and Exams Office, in collaboration with the Faculties, are continuing to refine our support to online exams, improving that playbook in readiness for May 2024. This includes the in-room support to online exams that take place in PC Labs, with earlier notice needed to ensure the PCs are set up correctly and securely. Encouraging take-up of the available support is also key, as for instance very few academics made available their large cohort MCQs for testing. The goal remains a completely smooth experience for every single student sitting an online exam.