Category: Other

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Reading group in LTDS

A little while ago we started a small reading group for colleagues in the Learning and Teaching Development Service to share ideas and discuss current issues and publications related to learning and teaching in Higher Education.

We set ourselves a couple of parameters to encourage engagement, as we had tried a journal club previously to not a great deal of success.

This time we decided to limit ourselves:

  • to things that could be read or digested in around less than half an hour
  • to try too keep the readings short and digestible
  • to keep the discussion sessions to 30 minutes
  • to use small groups for discussion of themes, impressions etc

Over the past few groups we have:

Our next group will explore microcredentials by looking at the recent QAA quality compass paper – which way for micro credentials.  

This will be the first meeting of a slightly expanded group which includes colleagues from FMS TEL .

We have one person running the group for 6 months (Me!) and I look after collating suggestions which come in from anyone who wants to suggest something. I try to have a range of different types of materials and cover a range of learning and teaching related viewpoints as our group has people who work in policy, practice, pedagogy, quality assurance, data and governance, professional development and all the intersections thereof.

Last time we listened to a radio programme about closed captions, which really made me think about how we approach captioning in HE. Some great ideas resulted from the session and it certainly got us talking!

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Inspera Digital Exams – New Digital Drawing Tool Available

Introduction

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.

Continue reading “Inspera Digital Exams – New Digital Drawing Tool Available”
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Inspera Digital Exams: Allow Listed Resources Best Practice

What is allow listing?

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.

Continue reading “Inspera Digital Exams: Allow Listed Resources Best Practice”
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Semester 1 Marking Hints & Tips on Inspera

We’re currently within the Semester 1 Exam period for 2025-26. For anyone marking using Inspera we’ve collated some handy tips which you may find helpful.

Hints and Tips 

  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.
  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. Inspera Exams are always set up initially within the Canvas assignment as out of 100 points. You can edit the points on the Canvas assignment after the exam if needing to display raw marks (edit the Canvas assignment)
  5. For manually marked questions, Markers can add Annotations to student submissions. 
    • Within the student’s submitted text, click the left mouse button to select the text you want to annotate. Click Annotate. 
  6. Once marking is complete within Inspera, don’t forget to Confirm Marks, this will complete the grading step and push the completed marks from inspera to Canvas Gradebook.  
  7. It is now possible to port Inspera digital exam grades from Canvas Gradebook into NESS. For instructions on how to do this please see NESS Guidance.

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

Feedback release: As a reminder, we’ve relinked a blog released previously which outlines feedback release options if you’re wishing students to see Essay comments only: Inspera: Enable students to view Essay feedback comments without auto marked questions becoming visible – Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle Blog). If you would like to release any form of additional feedback to your students on Inspera, we have further information available on 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    

Got a quick digital exams question? Why not join our Teams Community about all things Inspera! 

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Preparation for January Exam period (Inspera Digital Exams) 

The January Exam period (for 2026) is taking place from Tuesday 6 January 2026 to Tuesday 20 January 2026 (including Saturday 10 January and Saturday 17 January). Inspera Digital Exams will be running throughout this. This blog aims to share communications Module Teams are asked to share with their students ahead of their Inspera exams, along with information around support with marking once your Inspera digital exam is over. 

Communications for Students  

Module Teams are encouraged to share communications with their students if sitting an Inspera digital exam. Note: Students must know their own University log in details (username and password). It may not be possible to reset forgotten log ins on the day of the exam. Please remind students of this. Below is some draft text that you can use in an email and/or Canvas announcement.  

[Title] Preparing for your [MODCODE] digital exam: make sure you know your log in details  

To sit your upcoming Inspera digital exam you will need to know your University login details (username and password).   

Please check that you know your login details before the day of the exam and that you can successfully sign into a campus Cluster PC. If you do not know your login details on the day of the exam it may not be possible to reset them before the exam starts.  

Your username begins with a letter (usually c) followed by the middle 7 numbers from your student number, which you can find on your smartcard. E.g. if your smartcard shows your student number is 212345678, your username is c1234567.  

If you cannot remember your password, you can reset it online or you can contact the IT Service Desk for help. If you have your password but would like to change it to something that is easier to remember you can change your password online.  

To help you prepare for your assessment, you can try out our demo exams via Canvas. There is a locked down demo and an open book demo. Both demo exams reflect the same demo content. The locked down demo allows students to experience the in-person Inspera exam security, therefore this particular demo should only be taken within a Campus PC cluster (as the required software will be installed).  

There is also a student page on the Academic Skills Kit about Inspera which students may wish to look at ahead of your exams.  

Marking your Inspera Exams:  

We highly recommend those Grading on Inspera check out our dedicated website: Marking Exams in Inspera | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University. This has: 

  • Bitesize video guides 
  • Written guidance about how to navigate Grade  
  • How to use areas like the Grading Overview 
  • Instructions about reviewing auto and manual marking 
  • Confirming grades 
  • FAQs 

If you’re planning to release any feedback to students  directly on Inspera, please see our Inspera Feedback Release webpage. 

Questions: 

If you have any questions, please contact digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk where a member of our team can assist you.   

Got a quick digital exams question? Why not join our Teams Community about all things Inspera! 

A reminder about the upcoming Learning and Teaching conference:

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Inspera: Sharing Best Practice Event 2025

Introduction

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.
Continue reading “Inspera: Sharing Best Practice Event 2025”
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Update: ‘Attendance’ is now ‘On campus engagement’ in NULA

We’d like to share an important update about how student engagement data is presented in NULA. The metric previously labelled ‘Attendance’ has now been renamed to ‘On campus engagement’.

This change is now live in the system.

Why we’ve made this change

The ‘Attendance’ metric in NULA shows a student’s engagement across all in-person, timetabled sessions available to them in their active modules — including both monitored and non-monitored activities.

Because this metric reflects more than just formal attendance, we felt that ‘On campus engagement’ better captures the full picture of a student’s participation in scheduled learning opportunities.

What this means for staff and students

Students will notice only a label change — from ‘Attendance’ to ‘On campus engagement’. There are no changes to the underlying data or calculations.

We’ve updated this terminology consistently across:

We’ve also expanded our messaging to students to make it clear that the on campus engagement metric is not a formal attendance record and will not impact academic records.

What this looks like

In the student interface:

In the staff interface:

Supporting student understanding

We will be communicating this update through our student channels, but if students come to you with questions, please feel free to use or adapt the message below:

Your ‘on campus engagement’ in NULA shows the opportunities available to you to take part in all timetabled events in your active modules. This gives you a clearer picture of your overall engagement and can help you notice any gaps so you can make informed choices about how you learn.

Please note that ‘on campus engagement’ data in NULA is not your formal attendance record and will not impact your academic record.

The system is designed to give you real-time insights that support your learning and any conversations with your personal tutor or support teams. It is not used in a punitive way.

If something does not look as expected, it may be due to data processing delays or how activities have been recorded.

For more information, please visit the NULA pages on the Academic Skills Kit website.

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Inspera: Enable students to view Essay feedback comments without auto marked questions becoming visible

Inspera’s feedback release aims for transparency for all exam questions, however this had caused limitation for Module Teams wishing to releasing Essay comments as feedback, without revealing correct answers to automated marking. A new workaround is now available.  

Enabling Essay comment feedback only:  

  1. When marking an Inspera exam which includes Essay feedback comments that you wish to be visible to your individual students, comments must be saved as visible to candidate in Grade i.e.  

  

a. Feedback comments for individual student submissions are known on Inspera as ‘annotations’ and/or ‘page notes’. To see more about annotations or page notes go to Marking Exams in Inspera | Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle | Newcastle University and navigate to ‘How to mark manually marked questions using Inspera’.   

    1. You must finalise marking to enable feedback release i.e. marks must be confirmed. 
    1. Navigate to the Deliver tab for your exam.  

    a. You can do this by clicking Options and then ‘Open test in deliver’:   

      1. Within Deliver, scroll down and click ‘Show/hide details’ next to ‘Options’.  
      1. Tick Share comments with candidates (on the right hand side)  

        

      a. Please ensure you do not tick ‘Enable Candidate Report’ 

        Possible limitations:  

        Using this method means:  

        • Students would be unable to see final marks on Inspera however this would still be shown on Canvas Gradebook.  
        • There’s no per question marks breakdown visible.    
        • Students see the question and their submitted answers only if an annotation or page note was left for them by a Marker.   
        • Leaving a page note for all candidates on a particular question becomes disabled when using this feedback option.  

        If you have any questions specifically about your feedback use case, please contact digital.exams@ncl.ac.uk . 

        For general information about all feedback release options please see our dedicated feedback release website. 

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        New Canvas Gradebook Feature

        View Hidden Grades

        In the Gradebook Settings of the Canvas Gradebook area, a View Hidden Grades indicator option is available. This will allow Teachers and Admins to see an icon marking any grades that have not yet been posted to students.

        This will help you quickly identify which grades are hidden from students, reducing confusion and ensuring more accurate communication about grade visibility.

        This feature is available for use from 25th September 2025.

        How do I use this feature?

        To use this feature, you would navigate to the Gradebook area of your course in Canvas.

        You would then locate the ‘Gradebook Settings’ by selecting the settings option (cog icon) in the top right corner of the screen. Once here, you will navigate to the ‘View Options’ tab where you will be able to select the ‘View hidden grades indicator’. This enables the hidden grades indicator within the Gradebook of the particular course you are in.

        The gradebook settings area in Canvas Gradebook where you can enable ‘view hidden grades indicator’.

        What does the feature look like in action?

        In the Gradebook, an orange indicator displays which grades have not been posted next to each grade where this is applicable.

        An orange dot shown against a grade in the Canvas Gradebook to indicate the grade has not been posted.
        An orange dot shown against a grade in the Canvas Gradebook to indicate the grade has not been posted.

        Find out more

        You can find out more about the functionality of the Canvas Gradebook on the Canvas Course Navigation website, under the heading ‘Grades’.

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        NULA features and improvements for 2025/26

        As we begin the new academic year, NULA has introduced a range of new features and enhancements in the staff-facing system designed to make learning analytics more accessible, informative, and useful. These updates build on feedback from colleagues and aim to provide clearer insights into student engagement, easier navigation of the system, and more practical tools to support tutoring conversations.

        Metric help pop-over

        To make NULA’s metrics clearer and easier to interpret, a new metric help pop-over has been introduced. This feature provides quick, accessible explanations of each engagement metric—such as attendance, Canvas activity, submissions, and days since last activity—along with the data sources used to calculate them. By simply clicking on the hotspot icons in the student list or student overview pages, staff can see detailed guidance without leaving the page.

        Student attendance grid view

        The student attendance grid in the student overview has been upgraded to give staff more flexibility and clearer insights. Instead of a fixed 30-day snapshot, colleagues can now filter attendance by a date range, with a simplified table view, making it easier to spot patterns that matter in student conversations.

        Tiers

        The new Tiers feature makes it easier to filter and navigate student data by School, Faculty, or course. Depending on their role within the system, this means staff can quickly focus on the level of detail most relevant to them, whether looking across a whole Faculty or drilling down to a single course. Tiers also pave the way for more granular engagement metrics, giving a clearer picture of how students are engaging.

        Student Engagement history

        The student engagement history on a student overview page has been enhanced to give staff greater flexibility when reviewing patterns over time. You can now apply date range filters to focus on specific periods and choose to view individual data sets—including attendance, submissions, or Canvas engagement—separately. This makes it easier to spot trends, identify changes in behaviour, and have more informed conversations with students about their engagement.

        These updates improve NULA’s usability and provide staff with clearer, more flexible insights into student engagement. Additional features and enhancements will be introduced throughout the year, continuing to expand the system’s capabilities and support for staff and students.

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        Inspera New Feature: Multiple Attempts with manually marked question content 

        Multiple Attempts 

        Module teams, for the new academic year, can allow their students to take practice Inspera exams repeatedly using Multiple Attempts with manually marked questions. Use with automarked content has been available during the latter half of 24-25.

        Important note: Multiple Attempts is a feature which supports formative digital exams. There is no option to lock down an exam using Multiple Attempts.  

        Setting up Multiple Attempts with manually marked questions

        Important note: Multiple Attempts as a feature cannot be used with templates. Please ensure when setting up, your template is left blank i.e.

        1. Within the Deliver Tab, you will need to edit the exam settings and click ‘Enable Multiple Attempts’. (Once activated, the greyed box will turn green and include a white tick symbol).
        • You will be prompted to ‘choose method for attempt creation’ for manually marked tests, select ‘I want to specify attempt time windows’. This means the individual setting up the test would have flexibility to schedule attempts. This is recommended as the workflow for manually marked questions as there must be marker input prior to feedback release.
        • Once selected, you can ‘add attempts’:

        Each attempt will enable a different start/end time which you input:

        Click ‘create attempt’ to save and ‘add’ to create another.

        • Important note: All attempts must be within the Start date & time and End date & time defined for the parent test.
        • You will then be prompted to ‘choose how attempts are available’ for manually marked tests, select ‘Grader control’. This means Graders can release students’ next attempts once marked.

        5,   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. 

        The Digital Exams team will be releasing this new feature prior to Academic Year 25-26 teaching starts. We’ll also be updating our Multiple Attempts dedicated website.

        Any questions please contact digital.exams@ncl.ac.uk