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Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards 2025

The Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards aim to raise the status of education at Newcastle University by rewarding individuals and teams who have made a marked impact on the student’s educational experience.  

The 2025 winners have now been announced, with five winning submissions out of a very competitive field of nominations.

Congratulations to the 2025 winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Awards:

Dr JC Penet 

School of Modern Languages 

Dr JC Penet receives his award for his innovative and sustained contributions to the field of Modern Languages, in particular within the School’s Translation and Interpreting Section. In recent years, Dr Penet has successfully built a profile as an influential scholar and practitioner in translator education that has benefited Newcastle University, but also students and colleagues more widely through his engagement with coaching and mentoring practices. The awarding panel were impressed with how the winnings from Dr Penet’s previous Vice Chancellor’s award were used to reinvest in training that has led to the development of Translation and Interpreting Studies within the School of Modern Languages.

JC told us “I’m truly honoured to receive the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award for a second time. This recognition means a great deal to me, as it reflects my unwavering commitment to co-creating, with our fantastic students and brilliant professional services colleagues (Careers, LTDS), experiential learning opportunities that make education more authentic and situated by connecting students with real-world industry practice. It’s a privilege to support students in developing the critical, analytical and reflective skills they’ll need to thrive in their future working lives. I’ve also found it incredibly rewarding to see how my research into emotional intelligence in translator training has contributed to their growth and wellbeing. Too often, education begins from a place of deficit. It doesn’t have to—and I’d like to believe that my work, both as an educator and a life coach, is helping to challenge this. Change and innovation are never easy, but what a joy it is to help shape empowering learning experiences that allow students to rediscover just how creative and resourceful they truly are.” 

Bridging the Gap 

Academic Services – Library 

Pictured: Lauren Aspery, Liv Jonassen and Sara Bird 

The Bridging the Gap Team, who have representation from the Library, the Learning and Teaching Development Service, as well as Undergraduate and Postgraduate Interns, receive their award for their engagement with local schools, prospective students, academic colleagues, and our own first year students, in order to support new students transitioning into their university studies. The awarding panel noted that all of the university’s values are well embedded in the team’s approach, and that the project has visibly strengthened the Newcastle University transition offering. There is also a real possibility for opportunities and expansion for individual, international, and mature students in the future.  

The team fed back to us “We are delighted that our ongoing commitment to combat the challenges faced by students transitioning into university has been recognised by this award. It is testament to the meaningful and compassionate collaboration that took place throughout Bridging the Gap, the expertise and dedication of our project team, and the hard work of the talented and insightful students we partnered with, without whom none of this would have been possible.” – Lauren Aspery, Project Co-ordinator 

“This award celebrates the long-term partnerships that have formed as a result of this work, and our collective commitment to make our university accessible for all students. Sharing expertise across teams has enabled us to provide high-quality, bespoke support for students who are struggling with their studies in those early stages, setting them up for success in the future.”- Liv Jonassen, Academic Skills Team Manager 

“It is a privilege to be acknowledged for our contribution to supporting and empowering students to succeed. Having these resources means we are greater equipped to support students with all of the essential study skills they need to complete their A-Levels and transition smoothly into their degree studies with confidence, furthering our mission to provide equity of access to higher education.”  - Sara Bird, Education Outreach Officer 

Loyola Study Abroad Centre 

International Office 

Pictured: Grace Baker and Dina Schwartz 

Loyola Study Abroad Centre, part of the International Office, receives their award for significantly enhancing the educational experience of both students and colleagues at Newcastle and Loyola University, Maryland, through its innovative programme of dedicated support. It is evident the team have gone above and beyond to ensure Loyola students are happy during their time at Newcastle. The panel also acknowledges that this huge team effort has been working together for the benefit of the two institutions for 30 years, and that this award is a recognition of that group effort and the history of the centre. In addition, the project’s civil engineering accreditation is very innovative and offers a model for future collaborations 

Grace explained “The relationship with Loyola University Maryland is a special and enduring partnership – celebrating 30 years in 2025. I’ve been the Center Manager for ten of those, and it is a role that never grows tired: watching students’ personal transformation each semester, providing support and structure to see them flourish. We’ve also developed innovative programming, which is possible when you work with a forward-thinking partner like Loyola, who also deeply care about the opportunities an international education brings. Thank you for this award, and a special ‘thank you’ to every school and team across the universities that contribute to the success of the Center.” 

Initial Teacher Education 

School of Education, Communication & Language Science 

 Pictured: (Left to Right) Fiona Hepton, Christian Kitson, Andrew O’Sullivan, Fred Clark, Jon Haines, Susan O’Hagan, Hayley Hands and Chris Blakey 

The Initial Teacher Education team from the school of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, receive this award for successfully leading a rigorous, three-year reaccreditation process following the DfE ITE Market Review (from July 2021 to July 2024). This process required all ITE providers to develop detailed curricula for student teachers and school-based mentors, ensuring that training systematically and consistently drew upon the latest high-quality research on teaching and learning. The team’s leadership resulted in a successful reaccreditation, affirming the University’s status as a leading provider of ITE. 

The team commented the following; 

Fiona: “We are incredibly proud that the Initial Teacher Education Programme has been recognised with this award. It’s a testament to the dedication of our team and partner schools in preparing the next generation of outstanding teachers for both primary and secondary education. At the heart of our work is a deep commitment to supporting trainees as they begin their journey into the profession, ensuring they are well-equipped to make a meaningful impact in classrooms across our region and beyond. At a time when the education sector faces significant challenges in teacher recruitment and retention, the success of our ITE provision is more important than ever. We are proud to be playing a vital role in attracting and nurturing passionate, skilled teachers who are so urgently needed in our schools.” 

Jon: “We are delighted to be recognised for our work in enhancing the quality and reach of our initial teacher education programmes at Newcastle University. As the lead partner in a growing collaboration with Durham University, we are extending our impact even further across the region and are proud not only to deliver training that meets the rigorous standards set by the DfE and Ofsted, but also to provide our local schools with some of the very best Early Career Teachers.” 

Fred: We are deeply honoured to receive the Vice-Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award, which recognises the sustained commitment, innovation, and impact of our Initial Teacher Education programmes. This achievement is a testament to the extraordinary dedication of our team, our partner schools, and our collaboration with Durham University in preparing the next generation of outstanding teachers for both primary and secondary education. From navigating rigorous reaccreditation and inspection processes to expanding our regional reach, our team has consistently demonstrated leadership, resilience, and an unwavering focus on quality and equity. We are proud to be shaping a diverse and passionate teaching workforce that is making a real difference in classrooms across our region and beyond. 

Business in Action Team 

Newcastle University Business School 

Pictured: (Left to Right) Jo Clark, Dr Lucy Hatt, Cian O’Sullivan, Jaclyn Wright, Keira Iveson and Steven Sadi. The award will be presented at a winter congregation ceremony.

The Business in Action team, from Newcastle University Business School, receive this award for their transformative work designing and delivering an immersive, experiential learning module for our MBA that bridges the gap between academic theory and real-world practice. The awarding panel found their student-centered offer, and the active learning approach taken, has had an exceptional impact on student learning. The panel also commended the team’s work developing a supportive and collaborative environment for both colleagues and students to flourish within; an approach already being adopted by other programmes within the school. 

Jo told us “I am delighted that the work of our team of colleagues has been recognised with the Vice Chancellor’s Education Excellence Award. The Business in Action module, a transformative experience for our MBA students, ensures students have an opportunity, working on live consultancy projects, to apply their academic skills and knowledge in practice. Working together with external learning partner organisations we bring real challenges and business experiences into the classroom. We ensure that this experience benefits not only our students, but also our enthusiastic learning partners, a range of businesses and charities with whom we work on an annual basis, such as, PWC, Lloyds Bank, Aqua Consulting, Charity Groundwork North East and Cumbria and Northumbrian Water. These strategic learning partnerships are made possible by the effective teamworking between our academics and external relations colleagues, plus, alumni relations and careers advisors. Business in Action is both an enjoyable and rewarding experience, so we find that our learning partners are pleased to return year on year to engage with business school MBA students. 

Effective team work, internally and externally, underpins all of this activity making it my pleasure to lead the Business in Action, MBA module. This year we were delighted that colleagues from the School of Engineering were able to join us for final presentations. We are looking forward to extending the benefit of working with Newcastle University students by taking an even more collaborative, interdisciplinary, approach in our work with external learning partners in 2026.” 

The panel, chaired by Ruth Valentine, PVC Education, were greatly impressed by the wide-ranging impact, variety of initiatives, and creative approaches to teaching and student support demonstrated by all the awardees. 

For more information about the awards, and how to apply next year, please visit the Learning and Teaching @ Newcastle website 

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My internship supporting the rollout of learning analytics for students

By Em Beattie, Stage 2, Geography, Politics and Sociology student

This summer I worked as an intern for the learning analytics team. The learning analytics team has been developing a new system for Newcastle University students to allow them to review and have access to their own learning analytics data. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data, for the purpose of understanding and improving students’ learning. Student’s data is collected from a variety of sources to enable students to view their attendance, engagement and module summaries. The aim of this new roll out is to empower and positively impact students’ academic achievement and progress for smarter insights and stronger outcomes.

My key role was to contribute to the methodology and development of student communication channels, organise pop ups, analyse and manipulate data, contribute to design and evaluation of material and present findings. I really wanted this experience to develop my career skills, and I am passionate about academic growth and attainment. 

I found the internship on MyCareer, which is a Newcastle University platform which provides internships and work experience students can apply for. After finding the learning analytics internship and reading through the description I thought it would be a valuable and interesting opportunity. The applying process was very simple I attached my CV and answered three questions on how I would manage the hours required to work, what skills I brought to the internship and why I am the right person for the experience. When writing these answers, I used the STAR technique to provide efficient details of skills I brought to the table. After submitting my application, I was fortunately emailed a few weeks later asking if I was available for an interview. I was very nervous for the interview as I had never had an in-person interview before. However, to prepare I read over the description of the role, writing down on a notepad what skills I could bring to each of the tasks I would be completing and ideas I had. I also looked at the advice Newcastle university gave about internships on their website. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/careers/making-applications/interviews-assessments/interviews/. After I completed my first ever in person interview which although was nerve wracking provided me with real world experience which will be super helpful later in life, I waited to hear for the result.

Before starting the internship, I was slightly nervous, but I worked with an incredible team which were very supportive all the way. The learning analytics internship has given me an incredible experience, teaching me valuable skills and lessons that have allowed me to develop both professionally and personally.

Working with the learning analytics team has been so much fun. Through hosting pop-ups and interviewing students, I learned how to gather meaningful feedback, listen actively, and represent student voices in a constructive way. This experience also helped me understand the importance of real student insights and how they can inform and improve educational strategies. Although the pop up was quieter than expected as some students had left to go home for summer, we still gathered a range of responses online and in person.

After the pop up and students filling in online forms, I analysed data which taught me valuable skills of critical thinking and paying close attention to detail to observe patterns and trends of student’s responses. This experience confirmed my interest in qualitative and quantitative research, and I am now more confident in analysing data.

I thoroughly enjoyed providing a student perspective and spin to the marketing research. Another one of my tasks for the internship was to develop communication channels for students. There were multiple channels that were highlighted from the pop-up including emails, canvas, social media and in person discussion. For social media channels I utilised Canva, which was a fun experience to design a social media post about the new learning analytics system. Additionally, I also helped design the structure of the student facing webpages, using PowerPoint to design an example and writing descriptions around explaining why videos and images should be used.  As someone who lacks creative skills, I found it really fun to try and design social media posts and webpages for learning analytics and felt it definitely developed my creativity.

The best part of the internship was knowing that what I was working on would help current students in their academic growth allowing students to set targets and review their engagement of their work.

An example of a type of day from the internship includes a meeting which would either be held in the Kingsgate building or remotely on teams depending on the team’s availability. During this meeting we discussed what we had all been working on, gave each other feedback and ideas and planned our tasks for next week. A lot of the work I did complete was online such as analysing data, creating ideas for communication channels and researching and comparing other universities learning analytics system.

The experience massively helped my confidence, interviewing students and presenting my research pushed me out of my comfort zone but helped me become much more comfortable in putting myself out there.

One challenge I faced was managing all the weekly tasks. Some weeks were busier than others, but on those busy weeks I used my notebook to schedule when I was completing each task, how long the tasks would take, when meetings where and if I had any questions during those tasks to keep track of everything.

One tip I would give to students doing an internship is to write down the skills that they have learnt during the experience with a description. I have done this, and it was helpful as I completed my student internship pathway reflection and will be useful for future interviews and applications as I can explain clearly what skills I developed from this experience.

Looking into the future…

Moving into third year is scary but knowing I am bringing valuable skills that I have learnt from this experience makes me feel more confident and ready. I am looking forward to use study goal to improve my academic progress and create targets to better myself.

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Inspera new feature using Stimulus

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 
  1. While editing the Stimulus, select the text that you want highlighted and click on the highlight brush (at the top right of the toolbar) 
  1. Select the question this highlight refers too: 

In this example, the MCQ question is selected 

  1. Click insert  
  1. Repeat for all questions as required 
  1. Review all highlights using ‘Section highlights’ 
  1. Save 

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

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Reflecting on year one of NULA – and what’s coming next 

As we near the end of the first academic year using the Newcastle University Learning Analytics (NULA) system, we’re taking a moment to reflect—and we want to hear from you.

NULA was introduced to support teaching and learning by giving colleagues greater insights into student engagement and progress. Over the past year, colleagues across the university have used the platform to inform tutoring conversations and connect with students in more meaningful ways.

Now, your feedback will help us understand what’s working, what could be improved, and how NULA can be better used to support students moving forward.

Share Your Experience 

We’ve created a short survey (it takes less than 10 minutes to complete) to gather your thoughts. Whether you’ve used NULA extensively or only briefly, your perspective is incredibly valuable. 

Complete the survey now  

Your responses will directly influence how NULA evolves. We’re committed to ensuring the system continues to meet your needs and enhances the learning experience for all – thank you for taking the time to contribute. 

What’s Next for NULA 

We’re excited to share that several important developments are on the way: 

Student app launch – September 2025 

The student-facing version of the NULA app will be available for the start of the 2025/26 academic year, designed to give students greater insight into their learning and engagement. Dedicated resources for student will be made available on the Academic Skills Kit website. 

New data sources for colleagues 

From next academic year, the colleague-facing version of NULA will include ReCap lecture capture data and Library Reading List data—offering an even more comprehensive picture of student engagement. 

These enhancements are driven by your feedback, and we’re committed to ensuring NULA continues to support your work in meaningful and practical ways. 

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Inspera Digital Exams Team Leading External User Group

Inspera External User Group

The Inspera Digital Exams Team at Newcastle have set up and led on a user group for Inspera users at other institutions in the UK. 

Through existing connections and the support of our Account Manager at Inspera, we have contacted colleagues in similar roles to ourselves (Learning Enhancement and Technology Advisers) to create a group where we can share best practice, learn from each other and have the opportunity to discuss aspects of our Inspera use.

The group first met in November 2024 and as of June 2025 has 33 members across 13 institutions. We have received lots of positive feedback on how useful the group is, and we have enjoyed meeting other fellow Inspera users.

The Inspera Leads at Newcastle are always looking for ways to improve the service our Digital Exams Team can offer and work with Inspera to share feature requests. The group have been sharing what their priorities are in terms of things we would like to see in Inspera so that we can share this with Inspera.

Inspera Priorities at Newcastle 

Maddie and Kimberly of the Digital Exams Team, along with some of our academics who use Inspera, took part in some user research with Inspera in relation to marking and feedback. 

In relation to marking and feedback, our key priorities are: 

  1. Release of feedback restrictions, i.e. flexibility to release essay feedback comments without releasing banks of MCQs. 
  1. Editing questions after an exam i.e. where mistakes have been found afterwards upon marking. A request has been highlighted whereby, for auto marked questions, users can use answer key corrections (like the functionality of MCQs) but for all for auto marked questions. 
  1. Data availability for questions used in exams. Inspera are currently working on their analytics, with a psychometric dashboard currently available for the Inspera Digital Exam Leads to access. 

Other feature requests we support, which are in relation to question authoring, include: 

  • Author tab to include example questions and question sets. 
  • ‘Tick box’ to confirm when a question set has been finalised.   
  • Ability to have template of example question sets to share across users.   
  • Being able to collapse sections in assessments to avoid having to scroll up and down when editing one of the later sections. 

If you would like to know more about our priorities at Newcastle, you can get in touch with the Digital Exams Team via: Digital.Exams@newcastle.ac.uk.  

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Inspera: Marking Hints/Tips & New Community

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. 
  1. 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. 
  1. 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’. 
  1. 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).   
  1. 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). 
  1. 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: 

  1. Enable colleagues who use Inspera for their Digital Exams, to ask general questions in a dedicated area 
  1. Create a space for colleagues to share ideas and best practice and/or learn from others experience. 
  1. Build a supportive community network of like-minded colleagues. 
  1. Enable the Digital Exams Team to share updates about Inspera such as feature developments, improvements and Roadmaps. 

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. 

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E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences (EAMS) 2025 Conference

EAMS Conference logo

The E-Assessment in Mathematical Sciences (EAMS) conference, takes place between 16th and 27th June 2025.  

Organised by the team behind our Numbas e-assessment system, the conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners with an interest in e-assessment for mathematics and the sciences. It will consist of a mix of presentations of new techniques, and pedagogic research, as well as workshops where you can get hands-on with leading e-assessment software. 

EAMS 2025 is an entirely online conference, with a mix of live sessions and web-based activities, and plenty of opportunity for discussion and collaboration. 

Before the conference starts, there will be a programme of optional training workshops available for participants to get hands-on with state-of-the-art maths e-assessment software.  

Live talks will take place over Zoom at 9:30 and 15:30 BST (UTC +1) each weekday, with recordings available later. The online format and longer timescale allow participants to engage more deeply with the material presented. 

The call for talk and workshop proposals is currently open. If you have some research or an innovative technique related to mathematical e-assessment that you would like to present, then please submit an abstract at eams.ncl.ac.uk/call-for-speakers by 2nd May. 

We’re actively seeking to increase the diversity of our attendees and speakers, and particularly encourage speakers from groups under-represented in previous editions of EAMS to submit proposals. 

To attend the conference, please register for free at eams.ncl.ac.uk/register.  

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Inspera New Feature: Multiple Attempts 

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’. 
  1. 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’. 
  1. 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 

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Question Set Functionality in Inspera Digital Exams – Part 2

Introduction 

As we approach the Semester 2 (24/25) question set deadline on 7th March 2025, the Digital Exams Team are sharing another post about question set functionality in Inspera.  

You may also wish to check out our first blog post from Semester 1: Question Set Functionality in Inspera Digital Exams – Part 1. This first post covers a lot of the functionality around making your questions and enabling functions such as randomisation, random pulling and candidate selected questions. In this new post, we will cover some of the other functionalities available. These include:  

  • How to share question sets with colleagues,  
  • Accessing and printing PDF copies of the question set, 
  • Duplicating your question set. 

Sharing question sets with colleagues 

There are a couple of ways you can share your question set content with other colleagues or your external examiners. 

For other colleagues on your module team, you may find it useful to add them as a ‘contributor’ to your question set. This will allow them to view questions and preview them in Inspera. This is also particularly useful if you are creating the content together with another colleague. 

How to add contributors to your question set:
  1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area) 
  1. Click on the Author tab 
  1. In the search bar type the question set name/module name 
  1. Find the question set you wish to print and click on the name to open this 
  1. Select the person icon icon (on the left hand side of the icons in the top right corner) 
  1. Search the person’s name and select them as a user from the drop down menu that appears 
  1. If you would like them to receive an email about this, please keep the ‘notify via e-mail’ box ticket 
  1. Click ‘Share’. 

Please note: if you cannot find a user when searching for their name, it is likely that they have not accessed Inspera via Canvas yet, and therefore do not have an Inspera account. They would need to access Inspera via Canvas to activate this, and for their name to show in the list. There is guidance available on the self enrol Inspera guidance course on Canvas. 

For external examiners, it is possible for you to add them as a contributor as well and ask them to access Inspera via Canvas. You may also wish to consider the option of downloading a PDF copy of the question set content from Inspera in order to share the question set content with them. 

Accessing and printing question sets as PDFs 

Within your question set in Inspera, it is possible to access and print your question set as a PDF. This could be to share a copy with External Examiners, or to create a paper copy if you are hosting a mock exam where you want a back up paper copy available just incase. 

How to print your question set:
  1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area) 
  1. Click on the Author tab 
  1. In the search bar type the question set name/module name 
  1. Find the question set you wish to print and click on the name to open this 
  1. Select the print icon in the top right corner 
  1. On the right hand side click ‘download question set’ 
  1. The download may take a minute or two to prepare, once ready select download now 
  1. The download will be in your downloads folder 

Should you wish to change what is available on your PDF, you can use edit Settings. Once within the Print screen, drop down the settings bar. 

Settings allow you to: 

  • remove maximum marks 
  • remove ‘documents’ or instruction pages 

remove certain questions from the PDF (i.e. hide auto marked questions) 

How to edit the PDF of your question set 

You can edit your PDF using ABBY Finereader. You can familiarise yourself with the FineReader video guides, and detailed written user guides which have been shared by NUIT. 

How to duplicate your question set 

Once you have created a question set, you can re-use it. The Digital Exams Team recommend duplicating your Question Set and then editing, this means there’s a clear audit trail of the Question Set used in prior years. 

How to duplicate your question set:
  1. Open Inspera (this can be done by clicking on your previous exam within Canvas assignment area) 
  1. Click on the Author tab 
  1. In the search bar, type the Question Set name/module name (in this example a ‘demo’ Question Set is being searched for) 
  1. Find the question set you wish to duplicate and click into the tick box (on the left hand side) 
  1. An options bar appears along the bottom, click ‘duplicate’ 
  1. A message will appear about the duplication, click ‘continue’ 
  1. Click into this new ‘copy of’ question set 
  1. You can re-label the name of the question in the top left corner using the pencil icon. 

You can now make any changes to the Question set for an upcoming exam. 

Question set deadlines

Once the Module Leader has completed their Digital Exam Form to confirm the details about their Inspera Digital Exam, the next step is to start creating their question sets.  

Question sets are created by the module team and shared with the Digital Exams Team via email to Digital.Exams@newcastle.ac.uk.   

The question set deadlines for 2024/25 are detailed in the following table:  

Semester  Question Set Deadline  
Semester 1  15th November  
Semester 2  7th March  
Semester 1 August Resit (Semester 3)  17th April  
Semester 2 August Resit (Semester 3)  8th July  
A table with the question set deadlines for each semester. 

Training webinars  

The Digital Exams Team deliver a training webinar ‘Creating and managing exam questions in Inspera’ which colleagues can sign up to via the Elements training system. The training session covers an on-screen demo of setting up and adding questions to your question set. 

If you have any queries about creating your question set, you can head over to our dedicated Creating Question and Content Creation Features webpages. You can also contact the Digital Exams Team via Digital.Exams@newcastle.ac.uk.

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Digital Accessibility Demo Day – 5th March 2025

What does “accessible” mean?

What difficulties do students have accessing the material we provide?

How do students surmount those difficulties?

How do you improve the accessibility of your material?

We’re putting on an event to help answer those questions.

It’s important that all of our digital services are accessible to their users, whether they’re students or colleagues. The Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations set out some legal requirements that we must meet.

But digital accessibility is a complex topic and many colleagues have found it hard to understand what they need to do to ensure their teaching material is accessible.

At our digital accessibility demo day, you can have a go at accessing university teaching material at a selection of stations simulating different access requirements and supports, including:

  • Screen reader
  • Speech to text
  • Keyboard-only interaction
  • Low vision
  • Low mobility
  • Magnification
  • Canvas Ally

We’ll have plenty of pointers to guidance and training opportunities to help you improve the accessibility of your material.

People from LTDS, NUIT and the Disability Interest Group will be there to offer support and answer any questions you may have about digital accessibility.

Time and location

The event will take place 13:00 – 15:00 on Wednesday 5th March 2025, in the Boiler House.

The Boiler House is in the middle of campus, between the Armstrong Building and the Student Union. Access is step-free.

There’s no presentation as part of the session – just drop in and talk to one of the facilitators.