Category: Digital Technologies

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Vevox Updates May 2026

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's logo

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. 

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Vevox: April New Features Release

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

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

  • New question type: Matching
  • Introduction of ‘Quick Polls’
  • Customisation of Countdown Timer Sounds
  • Timer Display
  • Improvements to the AI Quiz Generator
  • PowerPoint Slides Embed in Present View
Continue reading “Vevox: April New Features Release”
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International E-Assessment Awards: 2026 Finalist

We're a 2026 finalist

Newcastle University’s Digital Exams Service in LTDS is a finalist for Best University Digital Assessment Programme at the 2026 International E-Assessment Awards. Recognised for its ambition, collaboration and impact, the team – Maddie Kinnair, Kimberly May-O’Brien, Susan Barfield, Michelle Waters and Katy-Rose Brennan – were recognised for building a digital exams service that is sustainable, secure, accessible and trusted across the University. Continuously improved through staff and student feedback, the service has transformed assessment delivery at scale while making exam administration and marking more efficient. We’ll hear the result on Tuesday June 9th!

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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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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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Update to the workflow for setting up Turnitin assignments

Over the summer, work took place to improve the security, functionality, and performance of Turnitin assignments in Canvas. This means there is a slight change of workflow when setting up a new Turnitin assignment. 

You are no longer be required to select Turnitin as an “External Tool” from the Submission Type assignment settings. This step occurs on the assignment homepage instead, select Turnitin from the Assignment Settings (3 dots) button when creating a new assignment.

Guidance on the new steps to setting up a Turnitin assignment can be found on the Learning and Teaching website.

Please note that change will only affect how you create new Turnitin assignments; any pre-existing Turnitin assignments will still be available and any Turnitin assignments already set up for 2025/26 will not need to be changed. 

If you wish to copy an assignment from a previous year, follow the guidance for Using the Turnitin Assignment Copy tool.

It is now possible to submit a Turnitin assignment on behalf of a student, via the Turnitin inbox. Simply select ‘Submit on behalf of student’, and a drop down menu appears of all students attached to the course in Canvas. Select the student you wish to submit for, confirm your selection by clicking continue, then follow the steps to choose a file and upload the submission.

If you have any queries, please contact ltds@newcastle.ac.uk

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Inspera Digital Exams Update – 2025/26 Academic Year 

Inspera Digital Exams Team 

At the start of Semester 1 and Semester 2, the Inspera Digital Exams Team contact the Module Leader of any centrally supported summative Inspera exams that are due to happen that Semester. We will request that a Digital Exams Form is completed to provide the team with lots of useful information. 

You can find out more about the process of using an Inspera Digital Exam from start to finish for Semester 1, Semester 2 and for mid-semester exams, which we refer to as ad-hocs In our Digital Exam Journey PDFs. 

Continue reading “Inspera Digital Exams Update – 2025/26 Academic Year “