Posts

Posted on

New Guidance for Running Formative and Mock Digital Exams in Inspera

For colleagues who are considering using Inspera Assessment to deliver formative or mock digital exams, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new support resource: Using Inspera for Formative or Mock Digital Exams.

This new website has been created to help colleagues confidently plan, set up, and deliver their own formative or mock assessments using Inspera.

Formative and mock exams can play an important role in supporting student success. They provide students with an opportunity to familiarise themselves with the digital exam environment, practise assessment formats, and build confidence ahead of summative assessments. They can also help identify and resolve any technical or procedural issues before a high-stakes exam takes place.

What you’ll find on the website

The guide brings together practical information and advice, including:

  • Inspera features that support formative and mock exams
  • The benefits of running formative and mock assessments
  • Step-by-step guidance on setting up formative or mock exams in Inspera
  • Key considerations and responsibilities when hosting your own Inspera assessment
  • Frequently Asked Questions

Whether you’re planning a simple practice test or an opportunity for students to experience the digital exam environment before a summative exam, the website provides the information and guidance you need to get started.

We encourage colleagues who are interested in using Inspera for formative or mock assessments to explore the new resource and consider how these activities can support assessment preparation and enhance the student experience.

Posted on

User guide to the Inspera Learning and Teaching webpages

The Inspera Digital Exams Leads continue to build and develop the asynchronous guidance available on our Inspera Learning and Teaching website. There are various pages to support you with your use of Inspera. Within this blog post you can find out how to best use our website and the different sections available. 

New webpages 

Over the last 12 months, there have been a series of new webpages designed to support our users. These include: 

  • Inspera Ad-Hoc Exams – Find out how Inspera can be used for both formative and summative ad-hocs. 
  • Inspera Rubrics – Find out about how you can create and add rubrics to your questions, mark using rubrics and make these available to your students both during the exam and part of feedback. 
  • Inspera Monitor – Find out about what the monitor area is used for and how you can use this for any formative or mock exams that you are running in-house. 
  • External Examiners and Inspera – Find out about how you can support external examiners to access Inspera for both reviewing questions and reviewing grades. 
Coming soon: Using Inspera for formative and mock exams webpage.
Continue reading “User guide to the Inspera Learning and Teaching webpages”
Posted on

Inspera Customer Story

In this post we will share a recent customer story that Inspera created alongside our Inspera Digital Exam Co-Leads, Maddie and Kimberly.

Customer Story

At the 2026 International e-Assessment Awards in London, Newcastle University was the winner of the Best University Digital Assessment Programme.

The recognition marked a major milestone in a journey that began in the 2021/22 academic year. What started as a rapid response to pandemic-era take-home testing has evolved into a fully invigilated, campus-wide digital exam operation that rivals traditional paper-based testing.

You can read the full customer story on the Inspera website.

Inspera and Newcastle University Logos
Posted on

Migrating Canvas Classic quiz to Canvas New quiz

Canvas has informed us that they will no longer develop or improve Classic Quizzes and recommend using New Quizzes instead. Although there is currently no confirmed date for the removal of Classic Quizzes, we also recommend making the transition to New Quizzes where possible, particularly for any new quizzes you create.

You can identify whether a quiz is Classic or New by looking at the rocket icon next to the quiz name:

· A solid rocket icon indicates a New Quiz.

· An outlined rocket icon indicates a Classic Quiz.

· A greyed-out icon indicates that the quiz is not published.

A screenshot of the three icons for New Quiz, Classic Quiz and Unpublished Quiz

To help you understand the differences between Classic and New Quizzes, please see the feature comparison table.

If, after reviewing the features, you feel your Classic Quiz is suitable for moving to New Quizzes, Canvas provides a straightforward migration option. Please see the guidance on how to migrate a Canvas quiz to New Quizzes.

If you have reviewed the New Quizzes features and do not feel that your quiz can currently be migrated, please get in touch via LTDS@newcastle.ac.uk to arrange a Teams call to discuss your requirements and the options available.

Posted on

Inspera On Campus 2026: Innovate & Engage event – afternoon of Wednesday September 16th

Inspera users (and those interested in the system) are invited to the Inspera On Campus 2026: Innovate & Engage event on Wednesday 16th September, 13:00-16:30. This event will take place in person in the Henry Daysh Building.

This year’s event has two key focusses:

  1. Sharing applicable updates to the system with our users that will be available from the new academic year.
  2. Opportunity for users to take part in Inspera-led discussion sessions with other Inspera users across our University.

If you’d like to join us, please sign up to attend the event using the Elements booking form. This will enable you to keep up to date with communications about the event and assist with our planning. The full agenda will be released in later this month with details of the new features we are adopting.

If there is anything that you’d like to find out about at the event, please email digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk.

Posted on

Canvas Assignments: SpeedGrader improvements

Improvements have been released to Canvas assignments that use SpeedGrader and Rubrics. Visually it will look slightly different, but all previous functionalities will remain, with some additional features available.

Guidance for how to use these can be found on Canvas Assignment page of the Learning and Teaching website

Details of the improved functionalities are as follows:

SpeedGrader

The Document Viewer will load much faster, which is particularly beneficial to modules with large cohorts of students, where there is a long list of assignment submissions.

When navigating through the submissions via the drop-down menu, an eye icon will appear to indicate which submission you are currently looking at in the Doc Viewer.

The assignment submission status now appears in SpeedGrader, allowing you to flag a submission as Excused, Late, Extended etc.

When using Sections to mark, the process of selection the section has been improved. It is less fiddley to click on the right section, as the section menu remains visible until you click apply. It is also possible to look at multiple sections at the same time.

Detailed information can be found on How do I use SpeedGrader with Performance and Usability Upgrades.

Enhanced Rubrics

Canvas Rubrics have a few improvements that will help with the usability when creating rubrics and marking submissions.

It is now possible to alter how the rubric is viewed. There is the classic view you will be familiar with, alternatively you can choose to have the rubric displayed horizontally or vertically.

You can now import and export Rubrics, including exporting completed rubrics, that have been used to mark assignments.

Rubrics can be created and stored in draft status, and you can archive old rubrics when they are no longer required.

Further information can be found on the Canvas Enhanced Rubrics guidance.

Student Assignment Enhancements  

There are also improvements to the students view when submitting an assignment. As before, the submission page clearly displays the due date, the link to the Assignment Brief (which is added when the assignment is set up), the number of allowed attempts and the rubric is visible if one has been attached. A new feature is the Progress status bar, which will update when the student has submitted their assignment and then again when feedback has been released. When the student is looking at their Grades and Feedback, if a Rubric has been used, this will be displayed by default, clearly indicating the levels the student has attained against each criterion.

Up to date guidance on these improvements are available on the ASK website and more details can be found on What is Assignment Enhancements?

If you have any queries or need further guidance, please contact ltds@newcastle.ac.uk.  

Posted on

Updates to Vevox PowerPoint Add-In

Vevox have made some useful updates to the PowerPoint Add-In as part of their June 2026 update. You can find out about more of the recent updates made to the Vevox dashboard on the blog post Vevox: June New Features Release. These updates help make things clearer, easier to find and better connected!

There are six key updates which include:

  1. New ‘View slide’ option.
  2. New location of the leaderboard option
  3. New functionality for clearing results from a question slide
  4. Deleting polls function change
  5. PowerPoint slide decks will ‘remember’ which Vevox session they were previously linked with
  6. New functionality around ‘switching sessions’.

Find out more about each of these updates in the rest of this blog post.

Continue reading “Updates to Vevox PowerPoint Add-In”
Posted on

Inspera New Digital Drawing Tool

We are excited to share a new Digital Drawing Tool is available in Inspera, which has increased functionality compared to the existing legacy tool. From 2026-27 academic year, the existing tool will be removed in place of the new drawing tool only.

How is the tool different from the existing tool? 

Previously, our team would enable the existing drawing tool across your entire test (if you selected this on your Digital Exam Form), where it would be available for students to use in any/all essay questions in your question set. The new tool allows you to enable the drawing tool at a question level, rather than at a test level. Colleagues can choose what questions they wish to enable the drawing tool on for their students to use in their Inspera digital exam. 

Continue reading “Inspera New Digital Drawing Tool”
Posted on

Vevox: June New Features Release

Vevox's logo

Vevox have made a series updates to their features in their June product update. 

Find out more about the new features available and improvements to existing features, including: 

  • User interface updates 
  • Word cloud analysis 
  • Leaderboard flexibility  
  • Correct answer update/amendment ability 
  • Word cloud questions answer restriction ability 
  • Rich text editor improvements.
Continue reading “Vevox: June New Features Release”
Posted on

International E-Assessment Awards: 2026 WINNER!

We are delighted to announce that the LTDS Digital Exams Team won the award for Best University Digital Assessment Programme at the 2026 International E-Assessment Awards. The award recognises universities that have implemented a digital assessment programme or initiative at scale, transforming and supporting both academic excellence and the student experience. Congratulations to the team: Maddie Kinnair, Kimberly May-O’Brien, Susan Barfield, Michelle Waters and Katy-Rose Brennan.

You can find out more about the award on the eAssessment website or, for more information on digital exams, contact LTDS at digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk.