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:
New ‘View slide’ option.
New location of the leaderboard option
New functionality for clearing results from a question slide
Deleting polls function change
PowerPoint slide decks will ‘remember’ which Vevox session they were previously linked with
New functionality around ‘switching sessions’.
Find out more about each of these updates in the rest of this blog post.
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.
Within this blog post, the Vevox @ Newcastle Team share details around the success of our Vevox adoption since its launch and details of a new User Interface coming in June 2026.
Vevox Adoption
Vevox has been our Audience Interaction System (AIS) at Newcastle University for coming up 3 years in August 2026. The Vevox @ Newcastle Team spent some time looking at our usage statistics with our Customer Success Manager and are delighted with its adoption during this time.
Newcastle University is performing significantly above both the overall sector average and the Large University benchmark across the measured adoption period, consistently outperforming expected adoption levels. This strong early growth demonstrates a highly successful institutional rollout, with Vevox gaining traction quickly across academic staff and becoming embedded into teaching and learning practices faster than is normally seen.
In the past year we have seen a 20% increase in the number of new Vevox adopters. Vevox users at Newcastle have also indicated a Net Promoter Score of 8 out 10 regarding satisfaction of Vevox usage.
New User Interface
There is an update planned for the Vevox User Interface (UI). Within the poll creation area, you will notice a different use of space. You can still see a list of all the content in your session, but there is now more emphasis on previewing what that content looks like. This makes it easier to manage your presentation and stay focused on what your audience will see.
This update will be rolling out to your dashboard on Sunday 7th June from 6am UTC. For more information, please see the Vevox release information about this.
Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) takes place on the 3rd Thursday of May each year. Individuals are encouraged to take an hour to experience first-hand the impact of digital accessibility (or lack thereof). This year GAAD takes place today on Thursday 21st May 2026.
Within this blog post, you can find out about asynchronous and synchronous content available to you to help you understand how to ensure your practice is accessible.
This blog content is relevant to colleagues in all roles across our University.
How can I increase my awareness and understanding of digital accessibility?
Asychronous resources
There are plenty of resources you can use to get started and learn about how you can make further considerations around accessibility and encourage others to do the same.
You can check out the following resources available at Newcastle:
As well as engaging with the online asynchronous recordings, you can also sign up to attend our Accessibility in Practice online webinar to learn more about how you can ensure your digital content is accessible in practice. The next session is being delivered on Wednesday 1st July, 15:00-16:30. If you can’t make this session, please select the ‘declare interest‘ button so that you can be notified when a further session is added.
Additional resources
The University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team also deliver a Disability and Accessibility session aims to provide colleagues with baseline knowledge and skills to effectively support disabled students and colleagues at Newcastle University.
Inspera have developed a new digital drawing tool which has increased functionality beyond the existing drawing tool. In terms of what is new, 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.
The new Digital Drawing Tool is now available to use on Inspera as of Friday 27th February 2026.
Within this blog post you can find out how you can enable the new drawing tool on your Inspera exam questions in your question sets and the functionality available within the tool.
Within Inspera, the standard exam set up is a secure locked-down exam environment where students are only able to access their Inspera Digital exam. They are unable to access internet search engines, their own notes or other applications.
Web pages and PDF documents can be ‘allow listed‘ so that they can be accessed securely within an Inspera Digital Exam. Allow listing of web pages or documents is completed while creating your Question Set.
The resources (when allow listed) are made available for students in locked down Inspera Digital Exams. A network filter ensures students are not able to navigate away from the page specified. All links, except allow listed resources, are blocked.
This blog post has been created to share some best practice around allow listing use in order to ensure the best experience for our students.
Colleagues in the Inspera Digital Exams Team of the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) invited colleagues from Inspera Assessment to visit Newcastle University for the third year in a row to host an on campus event with our users.
Fiona Orel and Ishan Kolhatkar visited Newcastle on Wednesday 5th November for this year’s ‘Inspera: Sharing Best Practice’ Event.
Our Inspera users were invited to come along to find out updates about using Inspera at Newcastle and upcoming features on the Inspera roadmap. The event is a great opportunity for colleagues to learn about how they can enhance their use of Inspera and ensure best practice. The Inspera Digital Exams Team arranged for some demonstrations on features and functionality listed in the agenda below.
The agenda included:
Welcome and Introduction – An update from the Inspera Digital Exams Team and update from Inspera Assessment around their Roadmap
Inspera demonstration – Rubrics Functionality, Manually Marked Multiple Attempts Assessments and Feedback Release Features
Questions and Discussion – Colleagues submitted their questions for Inspera to answer.
Vevox have made a series updates to their features in their October product update. Find out more about the new features available and improvements to existing features, including:
