Author: Madeleine Kinnair

Highlighting text within a Stimulus  

As seen on our dedicated content creation features website, within your Inspera Question Sets using sections, you are able to apply Stimulus to questions.  

Stimulus can be helpful when authoring exam content, as information that is relevant to question(s) within a section can be displayed alongside the question itself. Stimulus examples include:  

• case studies 

• background information 

• key concepts that students should refer too 

To further capture student attention to a particular part of a stimulus, you can highlight text in a section Stimulus. The highlighted text becomes visible to students as outlined per individual questions in the section.  

If a Stimulus is used for multiple questions, as students moves through the questions; you could highlight different parts of the Stimulus text in line with what is relevant for the selected question.  

Using highlighting: 

1. Add a Stimulus (using the document option) to your Section 

2. While editing the Stimulus, select the text that you want highlighted and click on the highlight brush (at the top right of the toolbar) 

3. Select the question this highlight refers too: 

In this example, the MCQ question is selected 

4. Click insert  

5. Repeat for all questions as required 

6. Review all highlights using ‘Section highlights’ 

7. Save 

Important note: for highlighting to be achieved, the Stimulus must be created as a Document.  

Marking Hints & Tips 

 You can check out some of our hints and tips for marking Inspera Digital Exams or our dedicated website. 

1. To access your exam(s) to mark, click the link within the assignment point in Canvas. You must be a teacher or teaching assistant on the Canvas module, and this will attach you to the exam in Inspera. 

2. If you need to search for a specific student, within the Inspera ‘Grading Overview’ section, use the search bar – you can search for a student ID. 

3. To download raw marks from Inspera, as an Excel file. Click the ‘Options’ button at the top right of the Grade screen and navigate to ‘Downloads’. Select ‘Marks and Explanations as Excel file’. 

4. Digital Exams are always set up initially with the Canvas assignment associated with your Inspera exam as out of 100 points.  (If you’d like students to see raw marks, please edit the Canvas assignment points area to match that of your total Inspera marks).   

5. For manually marked questions, Markers can add Annotations to student submissions. (Within students submitted text, click and hold the left mouse button to select the text you want to annotate. Click Annotate). 

6. Once marking is complete in Inspera, don’t forget to Confirm Marks, this will complete the grading step and push the completed marks from inspera to Canvas Gradebook.  

Video demonstrations: There are a range of marking videos available on the Inspera website which provide on-screen demonstrations of grading tasks. See Video guides for Markers. 

Feedback Release: If you would like to release feedback to your students on your auto or manually marked Inspera questions, check out our dedicated feedback release webpage.  

Further questions? If you have any questions about marking an Inspera exam, please contact the Digital Exams Team via Digital.Exams@newcastle.ac.uk    

Internal Inspera Teams Community (Digital Exams using Inspera Assessment @ Newcastle) 

The Digital Exams Team have set up a Newcastle University community via a new Teams group. This new community will: 

The Digital Exams Team will monitor this community to ensure members are on track for enhancing their Inspera digital exam and provide support queries relevant across all disciplines.  

You can request to join Inspera @ Newcastle Teams site. 

If you need support with specific queries relating to your own exam(s), please email digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk. 

Multiple Attempts is a feature which supports formative auto-marked Inspera digital exams. Module teams can now allow their students to take practice auto-marked Inspera exams repeatedly, either by having students submit as many times as they wish, or by setting a defined number of retakes. Please be aware there is no option to lock down an exam using Multiple Attempts. 

Multiple Attempts can help students to learn rapidly and understand topics by allowing them to practice until answers are correct. This can also allow for a dynamic and effective learning experience. 

Students can: 

• Improve their understanding of the topic by practicing multiple times 

• Increase their confidence by identifying and correcting mistakes 

• Prepare more effectively for exams by identifying improvement areas 

Multiple Attempts can currently only be used with Inspera digital exams which are using automatically marked questions. The feature can also be used with pre-defined feedback. Pre-defined feedback is recommended if using multiple attempts, as this allows students to improve their understanding of the exam content. 

Setting up Multiple Attempts 

1. Within the Deliver Tab on Inspera, you will need to edit the exam settings and click ‘Enable Multiple Attempts’. 

2. You will then be prompted to set a maximum number of attempts. If wishing students to have an unlimited number of attempts, click ‘Unlimited Attempts’. 

3. Under ‘Setting final result’, choose the most appropriate option for your exam which will be applicable as part of your student feedback. Options are: 

• Highest: The highest score achieved among all attempts will be the final result. 

• Average: The average score obtained across all attempts will be calculated and used as the final result. 

• Latest: The most recent score from the student’s attempts will be the final result. 

Student feedback when using Multiple Attempts 

When using Multiple Attempts, feedback should be set to be released to students immediately after each test attempt. Feedback which is immediate enables students to see full details of their attempt instantly and work on this for the next attempt. 

Full details about Multiple Attempts on Inspera can be found via: Content Creation Features in Inspera | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University 

What do snapshots do? 

If a student accidentally deletes text in an essay question, there is an option to restore it using Snapshots. This Snapshot functionality is available for students during their live Inspera exams. 

Snapshot is accessed via the test editor/option panel available to students on any essay question: 

The icon to retrieve Snapshots which are available is a backwards arrow around a clock face: . 

Once selected, students can retrieve previous versions of their work. A new snapshot is taken every 15 minutes and is saved in the browser memory. Snapshot use is available after 15 minutes of beginning work on an essay question. Navigating away from the question, and then returning to it would not disrupt the Snapshot. Snapshots are activated per question, so using this option could not revert any other question answers to an earlier instance.  

Important note: As browser-based memory is used for this feature, exiting the Inspera exam or refreshing the browser will disable Snapshots. (Note: refresh is only available in non-locked down exams). 

How does it work for students? 

When students click the Snapshot button, a message like the one below will appear. The student will be advised to select a snapshot and then click continue. This will enable them to retrieve prior instances of their work. Students can click the icon and select a different snapshot if their first selection is not what they were searching for. 

Next steps 

For academic year 2024-25, Instructions will be available to exam invigilators, these can be shared with students if needed in their exam.  

Instructions are also available for students to familiarise themselves with ahead of their exams via the ‘Instructions in Inspera’ tab on the Student Inspera ASK website 

For any questions, please contact the team via Digital.Exams@newcastle.ac.uk.  

Inspera Assessment, one of the University’s Digital Exam platforms, is in its third academic year of deployment. Following the launch of Inspera, the Learning and Teaching Development Service (LTDS) have asked for student feedback annually. Such feedback aids LTDS to ensure we are continually developing the service to improve student experience when taking an Inspera Digital Exam.  

• 142 students submitted their feedback in academic year 21-22  
• 104 students submitted their feedback in academic year 22-23 

Our comparison findings: 

Students are reporting that they are more satisfied with Inspera Digital Exams in academic year 22-23 compared with 21-22.  An increase is also seen in its ease of use: 

The use of demo or practice Inspera exams is also on the up. Students reporting using demos more so in 22-23 compared with 21-22; this is reflected in the increased figures on the self-enrol Student Inspera Demo Canvas course. Enrolment figures across the demo exams showed an 87% increase in usage for 22-23.  

Student engagement with Inspera demos is encouraging and LTDS would like to thank all colleagues who are promoting the use of demo exams to aid students’ familiarity with the Inspera platform. Try it out or share with your students: Student Inspera Demo Course. 

Next Steps 

LTDS will be requesting feedback from students for our current academic year after Semester 2’s assessment period. Where possible please encourage your students to complete the form as it helps to continue the improvement of the service.