how to do exams in elearning

How to Do Exams in eLearning

Ed McCorduckEnglish 260--Literature of SportsSUNY Cortland http://mccorduck.cortland.edu

how to know when there’ll be an exam

English 260: Literature of Sports

In addition to being announced well in advance in the Announcements tool of our eLearning room, the dates and times of our exams will be listed in the Calendar just like all other assignments. Normally, an exam will be indicated in the entry for a day whose entry has “do the following:” as with the one for September 25 in the following example:

example of the eLearning Calendar for September


example of the full Calendar entry for an exam


As always whenever you see something ending in a colon (:) in the Calendar, click on the day number in the entry and you’ll get the full details of the assignment as in this example:

info. you’ll always see in the Calendar entry for an exam


Note that the full entry for an exam will always tell you the following:

•the starting and ending times of the exam (disregard that “All day” part)

•which unit of our course the exam will be on

•the notice that all you’ll need to do if you can’t take the exam at the time given is e-mail me (by clicking on the link) to give me a new time you’d like to start the exam

what to do when it’s time for an exam


Then on the day and at the exact start time for an exam, in our eLearning room click on the Assessments item in the Course Tools menu. You’ll then be taken to the Assessments page, and look for the exam whose time it is for you to take; it should be the only item whose name is a hyperlink, as in the following example:

If you see the hyperlink for the exam you’re scheduled to take, click on the link and follow the instructions on slide 9.

slide 7: what an active exam on the Assessments page looks like


what to do if you don’t see the link for your exam


If you don’t see the link for the exam you’re scheduled to take, it’s probably because you’ve logged in too early. You’ll have to refresh your browser window at the actual start time of the exam; if you’re using the Internet Explorer browser, you won’t see the usual Refresh button in the navigation area of your browser, so you’ll have to hit the F5 key on your keyboard instead. When you do that, the browser will take you back to our course’s main eLearning page, and once again you’ll have to click on the Assessments under Course Tools and if it’s truly time to start the exam you’ll see the link for it as described in slides 6 and 7.

Note the information about how much time you’re allowed for working on the exam. When you’re ready to start, click the Begin Assessment button.

slide 9: just before you start the exam


You’ll always see an informational screen like this before you start any exam:

Read through and follow the exam’s Instructions carefully.

slide 10: the exam window


A pop-up window for the exam will appear:

To view your choice of questions, you can scroll down in this window, but to see more of the exam at once and really to give yourself more room to work, I recommend that you click the maximize button ( ) in the upper right corner

of the exam window.

slide 11: make this easier on yourself and maximize the exam window


You can also proceed to the next question without yet saving your first response, though to avert a disaster like a computer or eLearning crash or an Internet or power outage you might want to hit the Save Answer button a couple of times while you’re working on any response.

slide 12: how to answer and save your answers


After you answer a question by typing your text in the answer box below the question, you can click the Save Answer button located in the lower left below the bottom of the text box:

If you see this, do NOT click the OK button or hit Enter or Return since this will submit your exam without any of your answers! Instead, click on Cancel.

slide 13: what to do when you’re finished working on an exam


When you’re finished responding to two of the questions, you may go to the bottom of the exam and click the Finish button. If you do so without first having saved both or either of your responses, you’ll get a pop-up like this:

Whenever you get this message, you can always click on OK because on every exam you’ll be answering only two questions.

slide 14: after you’re sure you’ve saved all your answers


You can make sure you’ve saved all your responses by clicking on the Save All button next to Finish. After your responses are saved and you then click Finish, you will get a pop-up like the following:

exam submission confirmation screen


After finishing your exam, you’ll first get a notice that your “Quiz” is being submitted and then you will arrive at a confirmation page like the following:

As suggested by what I tell you in the confirmation screen illustrated on the previous slide, if you click the View Attempt button at this point, you won’t be able to see the detailed results of the exam because I’ll have to grade it myself first (similarly, even if you go to an exam’s View Submission page at this point, you’ll see an Attempt 1 listing for the exam but that won’t be a hyperlink yet). There are two ways you’ll know when I’ve finished grading your exam:

1. I’ll put up a notice in the Announcements tool when I’ve got the exams all done. When you see this notice, you can do what’s described on slide 20 below.

slide 16: how to know when I’ve graded your exam


2. When your exam is graded, you will see a green asterisk next to the My Grades item under your My Tools menu:

Now, if you click on this My Grades item, you’ll be taken to your My Grades page which will look something like this:

slide 17: the other way you’ll know when I’ve graded your exam


a partially filled My Grades page


Notice that in this example, the “grade” for Exam Two is given as “169.00.” All your “grades” for our exams will be reported in your My

Grades tool like this, i.e., as just a figure in the range of 130 to 200, and these will mean absolutely nothing to you. Instead, see the “exams” part of the “Assessments” subsection of the “main parts of this course” section of our Syllabus for a full explanation of why eLearning gives your exam “grade” like this. To see the true feedback and grade I gave you on each of your responses, follow the procedure on the next three slides.

slide 19: why you won’t be able to tell much from the My Grades page


Click on this to view my comments and grade on each part of your exam which will look something like this:

slide 20: the best way to view your grade on an exam


Click on the Assessments item in the Course Tools menu to go to the Assessments page. Locate the exam whose grade you want to view, and then click on the “Action Links” icon ( ) to the right of the exam’s name. You’ll see the following pop-up context menu:

what a graded exam will look like


how to determine your overall grade on an exam from the grades on each question


Look for my comments in italics under each of your responses. The various points I make in each response I’ll separate with a |, and any comment I make that’s based on some part of your response that I quote will be linked to it by a hyphen. And at the very end of my comments I’ll give you a grade for just that question. Again, to see how I combine these two letter grades into a single grade equivalent for the exam, consult the “exams” part of the “Assessments” subsection of the “main parts of this course” section in the Syllabus tool.

how to do exams in elearning

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