Learning and Teaching Hub @Bath

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Digital assessments (Inspera)

Welcome to the Inspera Information Hub

On these pages you will be able to find details about the functionality of Inspera, what staff need to do to get ready for exams and how you can access any support you need to help you do your job.

What is Inspera?

Inspera is a very intuitive assessment platform for Administrators, Assessment Owners, Markers and Students. The main highlights are that it supports many question and answer types which cater for STEM subjects, and it allows students to take their exams anonymously. In the long term it will allow us to run hybrid assessments where students can submit either on paper, digitally, or use a combination of the two. You can learn more about why Inspera was procured here.

Accessing Inspera

All users should be able to access the system using their University credentials. You’ll receive an email once access is granted and you’ll be able to use your University credentials to sign in (SSO). If you have not received an email, please email inspera-support@bath.ac.uk with your username to be added to the system.

How does Inspera affect you?

Important things to note: 

Naming convention for question sets – These must be unit code-based. ie, SP30278 Examination S1 2020/21 This is vital so that those arranging the exams can identify the correct question set to link to the exam instance containing the cohort for your uni.

Exam Information Sheet (Cover Sheet) - the Exam Information Sheet (arranged by Faculty/School Planners) will contain cover sheet information and will be accessible to students once an exam has been activitated. If there is anything that students must not see ahead of the exam start time/date, please include this in the exam itself as a 'Document' Question Type (eg. sections in the exam could be: Information, Part A, Part B.)

You will be able to create your exams directly in the Inspera platform, or upload a PDF document of your exam to Inspera. For more information about authoring exams in Inspera, please visit the Guidance for Authors page.

The following question types have been approved for use in exams on Inspera.

Automatically marked:

Manually marked:

Not marked:

Component:  What is it?  How does this translate from my current scripts? 
Question  One question forming part of a broader set of questions  Add one question.  

Where you have 4 questions for part A, add these 4 questions separately, rather than as one larger question. Except if students must choose to answer some but not all questions.
Question Set  A set of questions which form an exam paper Add all questions you will require in the exam. E.g., SP30278 Examination Sem1 20/21 

If you have 4 questions for Part A and 4 questions for Part B, you would add all as individual questions.  

A Question Set is a group of questions which fit together. 

Each Exam is linked to a Question Set.
Section  A chapter. E.g., Part A or Part B.  

 

Note settings around shuffling will apply to all questions within a Section. 

 A Question Set can be arranged in a structure. 

You can add Sections to a Question Set and drag the appropriate question into this Section.  

If shuffling questions, the will apply to every question in the given section. 

For this reason, please keep any exam information in a separate section. E.g., 

  • Section 1 for a Document which contains information 
  • Section 2 for Part A 
  • Section 3 for Part B 

The cover sheet will generally be arranged by the Faculty/School Administration staff however if you have time-sensitive information which you do not want students to see ahead of the exam, add this in its own section at the top (before Part A, Part B etc.) as a "Document" Question Type.

Where you have an exam along the lines of “Select 2 questions from 6”, as the whole exam, please see the below Stimulus description. 
Stimulus  A reference document  Where you have an exam which encompasses ALL questions and students need to select 2 out of 6, upload the questions into a stimulus. These will then show neatly on the left-hand side. Then provide 1 essay type question for the Response 1 field, and provide another essay type question for the Response 2 field. Be sure to adjust marking allocations accordingly. 

The stimulus option can be found by clicking on the icon which looks like a book: 

The left stimulus for basic and vertical layout can be resized by the author. The size is reflected in percentage. The author can also allow students to resize the stimulus.
These settings can be verified in preview. 

Where a Set of Questions differs between Part A and Part B, please use different sections with a different stimulus in each. 

 

What are the different roles in Inspera?

Role   Who   What can they do?  
Administrator   Nominated faculty administration individuals Can manage users within their organisation (department); create, delete and allocate roles

 
Planner   Nominated Faculty and Departmental administrators  Has access to the tools: Deliver, Monitor, Grade. Can create tests and invite contributors. A planner needs to be a planner on a test to be able to perform planner-actions. 
A planner that creates a test is automatically a contributor on the test. A planner can also be invited by another planner, and thus a test can have more than one planner.  The Planner role ultimately links the Question Sets produced by academic staff to the SAMIS-generated Exam timeslot, and sets the conditions under which the exam will be set, e.g., spellcheck yes/no, adds cover sheets, identifies candidates with extra time and allocates accordingly. This is ultimately receiving the paper, applying Faculty/School formatting and ensuring it is ready for release. 
Unit convenors will, as they are now, be responsible for creating, ensuring moderation of and finalising the exam. This can all happen within Inspera. 
Author   Unit Convenor   and staff who set questions for exams Has access to the Author tool. Can create question and question sets but needs to be a contributor on a test to author question set for a test.  
Chief Invigilator   Academic staff and faculty and departmental administrators    We will not be using these during this academic year.
Invigilator    Academic staff   We will not be using these during this academic year.
Grader     Academic staff   Can be assigned to grade submissions.

How do I get help?

First, please look at our Digital Assessment FAQs to see if your question has been answered.

Speak to your departmental administrator or fellow academic colleagues if you have a question related to departmental procedures.

If specific help is required, staff can contact the support email address.

Inspera and SAMIS

Inspera is linked to SAMIS, so it will automatically load exam instances listed in SAMIS into Inspera when we need it to, along with the specified candidates. Marks in Inspera will also transfer to SAMIS, once confirmed.

Contact

Please send any queries or questions you have about using Inspera to the email address below:
inspera-support@bath.ac.uk