Final Exam Best Practices

NOTES:

• For UTM information regarding Instructor Administered Exams, please refer to the UTM Office of the Registrar Faculty and Staff Applications section.

Either Quercus Assignments or Quercus Quizzes can be used depending on the options you require for the assessment.  We have created a video that describes the different functionalities of Quercus Assignments, Quizzes and Surveys:  

Duration:  50 minutes, 42 seconds
Link:   https://youtu.be/M4CTj8-vweM.

Best practices: 

• Share instructions on how to take the exam well in advance.  

• You may wish to provide exam format information, such as the types of questions, the grade points, the estimated amount of time per question. 

• UTM Learn Anywhere – Submitting Assignments:  https://library.utm.utoronto.ca/students/canvas/submitting-assignments

• UTM Learn Anywhere – Take a Quiz in Quercus:  https://library.utm.utoronto.ca/students/canvas/taking-online-quiz 

• Where possible provide a practice exam or let students know that they can access this UTM Student Test Practice Module using the link below.   
  Select the Enroll in Course button and following the instructions to self-enroll:  https://q.utoronto.ca/enroll/7EJKWJ 

• Provide a method of contact during the exam in the event of any disruptions such as internet connectivity. 

• Advise students that the Canvas Student mobile app should not be used for any high-stakes activities such as submitting assignments or quizzes—important tasks and assessments should be completed on a desktop or laptop computer instead. 

• Advise students to use one of the recommended Internet browsers: Firefox or Chrome 

• Instruct students to plug in their device to AC power. 

• Consult with Accessibility Services (UTM) regarding any students who need special accommodations before granting any considerations such as a time extension.  More information is provided about accommodations for Quercus assignments and quizzes.  NOTE:  When adding a time extension consideration, do not delete any Assign to areas, only add additional times, do not remove them.  More information is provided about assignment accommodations.  

• Add an Academic Integrity statement.  This can be in the form of a multiple choice question on a Quercus quiz with a zero-point value, or a statement at the top of a document for a File Upload/Take Home exam format.  A suggestion for the wording could include: 

  • In submitting this exam, the expectation is that your conduct during this exam adheres to the Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters and that you have not acted in such a way that would constitute cheating, misrepresentation, or unfairness, including but not limited to using unauthorized aids and assistance, impersonating another person, and committing plagiarism.  

• Additional resources for students include:

  • Recommended Technology Requirements for Remote/Online Learning
  • Quercus (Canvas) Browser and Computer Requirements
  • Quercus Basic Troubleshooting

• If you do decide to use images: 

  • Use images that are less than 600 pixels in order to prevent students from having to scroll in the browser and potentially miss seeing parts of the image. 

  • Upload images to the course and create a link from within the course. 

• Advise students in advance to use accepted file formats and fonts that are compatible with Quercus. 

• As noted in the UTM Academic Policies Handbook - “... Final grades should only be reported through ACORN/ROSI, after they have been submitted to eMarks and then approved by the Chair/Director. As a result, the final exam grade or, for courses with no exam, the grades for the final piece of term work, should not be released until grades have been approved and posted.” 

Best practices for Quercus Quizzes: 

• Remove the option to “Let Students See Their Quiz Responses”.  Allowing this option may allow students to deduce the correct answers. 

• When setting up questions, there is no autosave.  As such, be sure to click Update Question after making edits to a question, and then click Save when all edits to the quiz are completed. 

• By default, the Grade Posting Policy in the Gradebook is set to "Manually Post Grades". This means that assignment grades will only be visible to students after they have been posted.  For more information, please review the Grade Posting Policy page: https://utm.library.utoronto.ca/faculty/canvas/hidegrades 

• If you wish to only display one question at a time on the screen, enable the “Show one question at a time” setting. 

• It is possible to place multiple parts of a final exam (e.g., multiple choice quiz and a short answer quiz) in a module and make that module available at a specific date/time.  This would keep the automatically graded items separate from the manually graded items. 

You can also control access with modules with requirements and prerequisites: 
https://utm.library.utoronto.ca/faculty/canvas/prerequisitesandrequirements 

Best practices for File Upload and Take Home Assignments: 

• If you choose the File Uploads option, you are permitted to restrict the types of files that can be uploaded. We usually recommend not enabling this feature as in the past some instructors have not included all file types, causing students to not be able to upload their assignments.  However, if you decide to use this option, ensure you specify all accepted file extensions separated by a comma (e.g., such as doc, docx, pdf).  Any file extensions not specified will not be accepted. 
  
  Please communicate the accepted file formats and fonts, as well as any restrictions to your students in advance. 

• Advise students to include their name and student number in the submitted exam response file. 

For both Assignments and Quizzes:  Avoid Data Loss when Multiple Graders use SpeedGrader 

When SpeedGrader is used, all assignment data is loaded and saved into the local browser for efficiency.  As such, accessing another student’s submission will not include updates that are made by other graders during your SpeedGrader session.  This can be problematic if multiple graders are grading the same students during overlapping sessions, even if they are not accessing the same student data at exactly the same time. 

Data loss can occur in the following scenarios: 

• editing an assignment rubric 

• editing the overall assignment grade 

• editing any quiz question scores or comments (even if graders are grading different questions) 

If it is necessary to have multiple graders grade the same students: 

• Ensure that only one grader is using SpeedGrader at a time. One grader should complete and exit their session before the next grader launches the SpeedGrader. 

• If it is necessary to have overlapping grading sessions, ensure that each grader refreshes their browser after loading each new student submission in order to get the latest data.