Hybrid exams: on campus and remote

Next to the eight guidelines for remote assessment, the following 6 points of attention are relevant to set-up a hybrid exam and manage your workload. More information is available below. 

1. Closed-book or open-book 
   In case your original exam is a closed-book exam, the remote version needs to be online proctored. You need permission from the Board of Examiners for any online-proctored exam and take extra fraud prevention methods. Not all Board of Examiners will grant that permission, which makes it impossible to administer the exam hybrid. In that case, you can consider to change the exam to a remote oral exam for the individual student. This requires permission from the Board of Examiners as well (the student will request this via the academic counsellor). 
   In case of large groups of students requesting a remote exam (such as during a pandemic), consider making both exam modes fully open-book and open-internet (allowing internet access, but forbidding communication between students). 

2. Open-internet exams: room requirements on-campus mode  
   In case of switching the entire exam to fully open-book (including open-internet), the on-campus students need access to internet via their own device (BYOD) or a TU Delft computer (in a computer room, which have limited availability). This has implications for the requirements for the exam room. 

3. Exam tool 
   Choose an exam tool that is suitable for your exam. 

4. Comparability 
   Make the on-campus and remote assessments as similar as possible. Administer the same exam questions remote as on-campus.  

5. Fraud prevention 
   Take extra fraud prevention measures for the remote exam only.  

6. Communication & technical support during exam 

   • In case of large groups taking the exam remotely, arrange an examiner for both the online as the on-campus exam, to answer content-related questions.

   • Communicate information about the content of the exam to both remote and on-campus students during the exam. Tip: Ans has a chat-function for announcements and individual questions. 

   • Be available for all students during the exam. 

• Closed-book on-campus exams imply online-proctored exams 

  • The remote exam should be online proctored and administered in a digital assessment tool. You need permission for online proctoring by the Board of Examiners and sometimes from the Director. 

  • The on-campus exam can be handwritten or be taken in the TUD computer rooms. Digital exam rooms have a secure examination environment, which ensures that students cannot open certain programmes (like browsers).

• Open-book exam implies access to internet 
  Students who take the on-campus exam should have the same recourses available as the remote students. This implies that students can bring their books and notes, as well as their laptop. They should have access to wifi and be able to charge their laptop in the room in which the exam takes place. Students cannot use communication tools (e.g., WhatsApp, email) during the exam in either mode. 

Use the remote version of your exam as a starting point for practical reasons (also have a look at how to design a remote assessment). Essentially, there are five implementations. 

Closed-internet methods (closed-book and open-book):

* Requires permission from the Board of Examiners and Programme Director. Some Board of Examiners do not allow remote proctored exams by default. 
** only for math service education.

Open internet methods

** only for math service education. 

Make the content and circumstances on-campus and remote exam as comparable is possible, as well as the circumstances. The remote exam will be scheduled at the same time as the on-campus exam. Administer the same exam in both exam modes.  

However, remote fraud prevention measure should only be applied to the on-campus exam. 

The remote mode requires extra fraud prevention measures (see here). For the on-campus exam, no extra fraud-prevention measures need to be taken, as long as the on-campus students cannot communicate to the remote students. This implies the following: 

• No communication between students: In both exam modes, students are not allowed to communicate. On-campus, students are not allowed to use their mobile phone, nor to open communication tools (email, Teams, etc.) on their computer, unless explicated given permission. If they have a question, they can ask the examiner by raising their hand (in case of Ans they can use the chat function instead). Make sure to communicate this to students before the exam, and on the cover page of the exam. 
  Communicate this to students long before the exam via a Brightspace announcement. 

• Unique exams: The on-campus exam can be the same version for all on-campus students, while the remote exam needs to have some extent of unique exams. Except if it is very easy to copy answers from your neighbour within the exam room, like is the case for exams in digital exam rooms with large screens and multiple choice or numerical questions. 

• Oral authenticity checks: are not necessary for on-campus students. 

• Timeslots: These can be used for open-internet remote exams as fraud prevention. They should not be applied to the on-campus exam. In case of large numbers of remote students: To prevent transmission of information from on-campus to remote students, you might require your on-campus students to stay in the exam room under exam conditions until after the last remote break for extra-time students, i.e., without permission to use mobile telephones or other communication platforms on their laptop. Ask them to bring something to read or do on paper. 

• Fraud detection: In case you suspect large-scale fraud by remote students, the exam results can be declared invalid for all remote students by the Board of Examiners. More information on how to detect fraud automatically or by hand can be found here. 

It is important to be available to your students during the exam for stress reduction and fraud prevention: 

• Communication remote = communication on-campus: Communicate announcements on the content of the exam (for example “In question 3a, ‘v=15 km/h’ should read ‘v=150 km/h’”) both remote as well as on campus and minimize delay. Consider using the Ans chat function to make these kind of announcements, and to enable students to ask questions.   

• The following tips are relevant in case of large scale remote exams (e.g. quarantine obligations): 

  • Extra examiner: One examiner takes care of the remote exam, and one examiner is available at the on-campus exam. This helps keeping your workload resulting from two simultaneous exam modes manageable. 

  • Examination team communication channel: (in case of multiple examiners or remote examiners) Have a communication channel available to discuss issues during the exam for either exam mode within the examination team. 

  • Mitigate technical issues on campus for BYOD: Just in case of individual technical difficulties, have a couple of print-outs of the exam available so that these students can answer the questions on paper. If students need to have access to for example a formula sheet or specific tables, print these too.