Online Exam Update: Students

26 April 2020

Online Exam Update: Students

Centre for Technology & Innovation in Learning

 

Dear Students

 

Tomorrow is the official start of our first ever fully online exam diet. For many of you, your schools will be managing your end of year grades through extended coursework or other alternative, but for some, you will be taking exams through Turnitin submission, Questionmark or some other online tool delivered through My Dundee. I wanted to email you tonight to wish you luck and pass on some general information you might find helpful in the coming weeks.

 

Please note that your number 1 source of information should be your school and programme leaders. This email aims to give general information so individual courses may differ in approaches.

Exam modules

For the majority of the 200+ exams going on in the next few weeks, we have or will be creating special ‘Exam Modules’ that are passed to your Schools who will tweak them for your specific exams. We’re creating these modules at least a few days in advance of your exam date so you can go in, read the instructions, practice where appropriate and so on. This is quite an administrative challenge – but if you are concerned in any way, please reach out to your module leaders.

Questionmark exams are being run through a single module – one module to rule them all. If you are timetabled for this type of exam you will be able to access the Questionmark from there. Only access this module if you’ve been specifically instructed to.

Are you ready for your exam?

It’s important that you make sure your home setup is suitable to do your exam. Where appropriate, you will be invited to access your exam module and run through a practice of the exam process. It is important that you do this if asked to and report any issues to help4u using the form provided in the exam module.

Getting help during your exams

 

The main place to go with any concerns or problems before and during your exams will be your school and module leads. For technical support you can contact Help4u where you’ll either be routed to UoD IT or us here in CTIL depending on your query.

We’re also implementing a new tool called Eesysoft which you may notice in your modules as either a blue question mark or as some kind of contextual pop-up message. The university is implementing this tool specifically to enable us to better support you and your instructors. You can access guides and report issues to help4u through this tool.

 

Some final hints and tips

• If you have any issues with upload speeds when submitting you can try Microsoft’s instructions for compressing images contained in Word documents. If using PDFs you can follow this guide from Adobe.
• If attaching images to any of your exam submissions – keep them small. You don’t need the best an iPhone can produce for a hand-drawn diagram.
• Check out the eLearning resources for Students in My Dundee for advice on studying for your exams.
• Read the instructions! An obvious one but lets face it, most of us don’t by default.

 

I’ll finish off with the most important tip of all: look after yourself.

The university staff – academics, administrators, support staff, managers – are all here to help. This is an unprecedented time with many of us cut off from our normal support networks and routines, so whether you have a technical, administrative, academic or pastoral worry, reach out to the service and people available to you.

 

These exams are a huge challenge for all involved and be assured that the university is doing everything it can to give you a fair and stable exam experience.

 

 

Kind Regards

 

Hamish Loveday

Digital Education Services Manager, Centre for Technology and Innovation in Education (CTIL)

 

Note: In order to get important information out quickly over the exam period, we will be sending these emails out via My Dundee, so keep an eye on your university inbox.

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