Get started with Ans

To register or log onto the TU Delft Ans, follow the steps.

1. Go to https://ans.app/users/sign_in
2. To log in with your school account, search for and choose Technische Universiteit Delft

3. Log in with your TU Delft-account

In the column on the left side of the Dashboard, you will see the Courses and Question Banks you have access to. On the right you can see your Recent Activity, Upcoming Assignments, and Assignments that have been set live for students.

Additionally, an important button on the Dashboard is the User Icon.

• Where: The top right of your screen.
• Purpose: Change Language, check other Settings, or Log Out.

Settings you can change:

• Preferences: you can change the Language and your Time Zone.
• You can change your email preferences in the Mails menu, by (un)checking the boxes.

• The Access logs menu shows you when and from which IP address your account was accessed
• In the Quick Comments menu, you manage phrases that can be used to swiftly give feedback on answers of students in your Assignments. Think of phrases like ‘strong argument’ or ‘please elaborate’.
• In the Courses menu, you can see the Courses you're enrolled in. You can search through them or decide to leave them. If you click the Removed Courses tab, you can view Courses that were deleted.
• The Question banks menu has the same setup as the Courses menu but contains settings regarding your Questions banks instead of Courses.
• In the Background jobs menu, you can follow the Assignments that get printed, exported, or imported into Ans.
• In the API token menu, you generate an API token to automate certain processes within Ans, such as provisioning and managing Assignments and Question Banks.

For an overview, see the table:

Ans is an assessment tool that can be used for formative tests and summative exams and these are both called Assignments in Ans. Assignments consist of one or multiple Exercises, while Exercises can consist of one or several Questions. As TU Delft uses different terms, the table below shows the difference in terminology. The Teaching and Learning Support webpages on Ans will also use this terminology.

Question banks

• To create a database with Exercises.
• To share the same Question Bank between several courses, educational programs and their adhering lecturers, even outside of TU Delft.

Courses

• To contain the Learners and Assignments for one Course within one academic year.

Assignments

• To contain a set of Exercises with Questions that Learners will take in a Course environment.

A Question Bank contains a collection of Exercises and concept Assignments that belong to a certain  Course. You can create, store, test, and collaborate on Exercises and reuse them in Assignments across academic years or in other Courses. A Question Bank is meant to collaborate with other lecturers, even from other educational programmes or with lecturers outside of TU Delft, as long as they have a TU Delft NetID.

Courses contain the students and Assignments for one Course within one academic year. Whenever you make an Assignment available, students can take it. Ans Courses are based on Brightspace Courses; you can only link Assignments of one Ans Course to one Brightspace Course. For summative exams that take place in a secure environment on campus, a separate Course environment will be created.

Question Banks and Courses differ. The table  shows these differences and potential pros and cons.

There are three roles available in Ans Question Banks:

• A Publisher has maximum rights to edit in a Question Bank. If you request a Question Bank, you will be Publisher in it.
• An Author contributes to a Question Bank by creating Exercises and adding Domains and Objectives. Authors are added to the Question Bank by the Publisher.
• A read-only role called the Shared Question Bank View, whom is also added by the Publisher.

All Question Bank roles are teaching roles. You will never encounter students; they only have access to parts of Courses. The diagram shows the rights teaching roles have in a Question Bank.

There are different roles available in Ans courses:

• A Learner can participate in Assignments linked to a Course. Students have the Learner role.
• An Instructor has maximum rights to edit within a Course. If you request a Course, you will be Instructor in it.
• An Invigilator monitors the taking of a test; he/she/they does the surveillance during the exam. Instructors add Invigilators to the Course.
• A Reviewer reviews Exercises assigned to him/her/them and gives feedback. An Instructors add Reviewers.

The diagram shows which rights teaching roles have:

As Publisher or Instructor you can add teaching staff to a Question Bank or Course, respectively. In a Question Bank they are called Contributors, in a Course they are called Members. When you add Contributors or Members, you assign them a role in that environment:  

1. On the home screen click TU Delft (top left beneath your name).
2. Click the Question Bank or Course tab and choose one.
3. Click the Contributors or Members tab at the top of your screen.

3. Click the Add Contributors or Add Staff button.
4. In the Role drop-down select the role.
5. Search for and select the user from the list. Click Add.