Beta: exam mode

[bmesuere]

We're preparing a set of features designed to make taking tests and exams on Dodona more robust, predictable and secure. Because Dodona is used in many different teaching workflows, we'd like to invite interested teachers to try these features early and share feedback before we roll them out to everyone. If you'd like to join the beta, let us know and we’ll add you.

Warning

Beta features may still contain rough edges. We do our best to deliver stable software, but you may encounter occasional bugs.

What’s already implemented in the beta

Enabling exam mode

Teachers can now enable exam mode when creating a series. This is a simple checkbox during series creation. Once the series exists, the setting cannot be changed. For now, exam mode only introduces visual cues: the series card gets a distinctive outline on the course page and a dedicated icon in the top-left corner. These cues help both teachers and students immediately recognise exam content.

Features currently in development

Scoped solutions

At the moment, solving an exercise once makes that solution count for every series containing that exercise in the same course. In exam situations that isn’t ideal, because we need to know which submissions were actually made during the exam itself.

For exam-mode series, Dodona will only consider submissions that were made inside that exam. Even if the same exercise appears elsewhere in the course, only exam-specific submissions will be taken into account. This gives teachers a clean, unambiguous record of exam work.

Starting and stopping an exam

When a series is in exam mode, students must explicitly click Start exam before they can view or solve the exercises. When finished, they click Stop exam. After stopping, the exam becomes inaccessible and no further submissions are allowed. This also allows teachers to require students to stop the exam before leaving the room.

A few extensions we’re planning on top of this mechanism:

• Require a password or code to start the exam; useful when sharing access only inside the classroom.
• Add session-based security checks tied to the moment the exam was started.
• Provide teachers with a real-time overview of who started or stopped the exam, including the ability to manually stop exams for individual students or groups.
• Allow automatic stopping of the exam at a scheduled time.

[IngeVerbeek]

Vraagje: zal je na het afleggen van het examen ook (tijdelijk) kunnen verhinderen dat leerlingen teruggaan naar de vraag/hun oplossing? Ik heb verschillende groepen leerlingen die op andere dagen examen afleggen. Uiteraard zijn het andere examens, maar ik zou het 'eerlijker' vinden als ik de opgaven terug kan verbergen na het afleggen van het examen zodat de leerlingen van de eerste examendag dit niet kunnen doorgeven aan de leerlingen van de tweede examendag.

Ik heb begrepen dat de reeks terug op "verborgen" niet voldoende is, omdat ze via "ingediende oplossingen" terug naar hun opgaven kunnen.

[bmesuere]

Dag Inge, het is inderdaad de bedoeling dat de ingediende oplossingen voor leerlingen niet meer zichtbaar zijn nadat ze het examen hebben afgesloten. We denken nog na of en hoe we het mogelijk willen maken om ze nadien toch weer beschikbaar te maken.