Category: 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! 

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:

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’.   

2. You must finalise marking to enable feedback release i.e. marks must be confirmed. 

3. Navigate to the Deliver tab for your exam.  

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

4. Within Deliver, scroll down and click ‘Show/hide details’ next to ‘Options’.  

5. 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. 

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