Exams and Assessment come in many forms. A pressing question is to what degree full online teaching urges you to change you current exam practices. It sounds difficult, but maybe it is not so hard as you might think. Whether it is about knowledge tests, assignments or presentations, each offline type of assessment has an online counterpart.

The bad news

We start with the bad news: Assessments that require students to come in groups to a physical lab or assessments that require students and persons to physically interact are not possible. You need to think up alternatives for that.

You could think about letting studens prepare lab work much more at home and only do the physical work on campus. You could let the students do the work in very small groups and spread the work over longer periods. You could also try to provide students with data that was required during previous runs of the courses or try to find online simulations for lab practices. If you need to work with people for interviewing, students could do interviews online.

But much is possible!

The way to do this #1:
Students can do individual assignments that do not need surveillance, just as before. Think about classroom assignments, case-studies, papers, essays, take-home exams

The way to do this #2:
Issuing group assignments can be done, just as before. Students have nowadays access to plenty of communication and collaboration technologies, such as VU Amsterdam Zoom or MS Teams. Think about working in groups on projects, case-studies, papers

The way to do this #3:
Traditional exams (tentamens) are still possible if they are administered with online proctoring. HOWEVER: see TAB 'Before → After': Make sure you can use online proctoring!

The way to do this #4:
Oral exams or Presentations are still possible by using Zoom or pre-record presentations

Before → After

So what must change?

Exam (tentamen) → Online Proctored Exam *, OR
Exam (tentamen) → Alternative form
Individual presentation → Zoom presentation or pre-recorded presentation
Group presentation → Zoom presentation or pre-recorded presentation
Written assignments that need to be submitted (take-home exam, project reports, essays etc.) → Proceed as normal by using Canvas Tools, FeedbackFruits tools and others.

Additional tips

Oral exams using Zoom are a viable assessment format if the number of students are not too big. It might even save you time.
In case your course requires students to give a (poster) presentation they can hand in pre-recoreded videos. They might also present their work for a 'real life online' audience. The use of Zoom breakout is really handy in this case, especially if the group of students is rather large.
Providing feedback to students after completing an assignment is also easy to do online via Zoom.
The digital system for taking exams at the VU is TestVision. Canvas is not suitable for simultaneously taking complex exams with large groups of students.

*Make sure you can use online proctoring!

Check your Faculty’s guideline for alternative assessment and check with your faculty's TestVision key user:

Faculty	Guideline	Contact Person
ACTA		icto@acta.nl
BETA	Guideline BETA (NL+ EN) Alternatives for internships BETA (NL)	digitaaltoetsen.beta@vu.nl
FGB	Guideline FGB (EN)	testvision.fgb@vu.nl
FGW	Guideline FGW (EN) Handreiking FGW (NL)	Ben Stuyvenberg (b.f.stuyvenberg@vu.nl)
FRT	see VU guidelines below	Welmoet Boender (w.boender@vu.nl)
FSW	Guideline FSW	testvision.fsw@vu.nl
GNK		toetsbeheer@vumc.nl
RCH	Kader en instructies alternatieve tentaminering RCH (NL) Guidelines alternative exams 19-20 (EN)	icto.rechten@vu.nl
SBE	Covid19 examination framework SBE.pdf	testvision.sbe@vu.nl
SBE-PGO		Esther Beenders (e.a.p.h.beenders@vu.nl)

*Check the VU guidelines for alternative assessment:

Dutch:

Handreiking richtlijnenkader alternatieve toetsvormen

English:

Reference framework alternative forms of assessment

Check FAQs about online proctoring on TAB FAQ of page Online proctoring:

Online Proctoring

Imagine you are not dependent on one single assessment moment to grade your students. By integrating a diversity of assessment types in your course, you can differentiate between students which excel and can use some more challenging assignments (they might be graded good at the end of the course) and the group that will progress slower than expected and might pass or fail your course (and may need some extra guidance). To evaluate the progress of your students during the course you can best integrate assessment types within your Canvas grading system (like assignments, quizzes and video with integrated quiz questions). Follow these steps to choose your diversity of desired assessment types.

Via VU taxonomy you can find alternative types of assessment depending on the kind of student activity that is important / class of learning objective. Do you teach in a bachelor programme and do you have learning objectives from the Academic Core? Then classifying academic core learning goals can help you together with the VU taxonomy.

Did you miss the workshops of VU NT&L regarding choosing alternative types of assessment? You can read the discussed content here:
20201001 Workshop choosing alternative types of assessment part I.pdf
20201126 Workshop choosing alternative types of assessment part II.pdf

Below you will find a number of summative assessment methods that might be used in offline ánd online teaching if you can use the appropriate technologies.

Knowledge Tests, Problems Test, Exams → Online Proctoring

Oral Exams → Oral exams using Zoom

Take home exam

Online Presentation of Individual or Group project → Online presentations using pre-recorded video or Zoom

Homewerk and Assignments

Open book exams

Students have strong opinions about the impact that online teaching has on their privacy. We as VU Amsterdam acknowledge this and take it seriously. To sum up the main points regarding privacy from a student perspective.

Take note of the following two aspects.

1. Sensitive data

In online teaching, privacy is a key issue in ensuring a safe learning environment for our students. This is even more true for online forms of assessment in which photo's and video's of students are processed, in particular in their home environment.

2. Stress and Technical failure

When students take an exam with online proctoring, students feel higher levels of stress because technology can fail or the process is interrupted by people bumping in, noise etc. We also know from experience that the Proctoring technology does indeed fail sometimes (though VU students can always get back into the exam if they are disconnected by accident.

This leads to the following two questions.

Do you really need a time restricted and proctored exam?

Investigate whether you really need an assessment form (multiple-choice, written exam or oral exam) that requires your student to film him/herself in the home environment under time constraints and their own equipment. Can another assessment form such as one or more assignments (essay, case-studies, research critiques) or a take home exam (not time restricted) do the job as well? And if you think this will cost you a lot of time to mark, ask yourself if you can find ways to minimize the marking work or distribute the work?

Do you need an oral exam?

An oral exam can be regarded an alternative for an online proctored multiple-choice or written exam. However, sensitive data of students is still processed and technology might fail. So in practice: do you need an oral exam or a live presentation in which the student is visible in a home environment? The most likely alternatives for such exam forms are the same as above: pre-recorded presentations, essays, home work and assignments and take home exams.

Check out the following pages to read about information provided to students about the protection of their privacy:

VU statement about privacy in online education

VU students Online Proctoring information, Privacy Statements, FAQs and Instruction documents

Kaltura quiz

Licenced to VU

Intermediate

Add quiz questions to your knowledge clip or lecture
Activate students by only showing more after answering the question
Use this type of assignment as preparation before class

Use why for direct feedback and help
Integrate your video with quiz questions into a Canvas assignment
Keep on track of students progress with Canvas grades

Zoom

Licenced to VU

Intermediate

Organise video meetings for up to 300 people
Chat, share screen or record your meeting
Schedule a zoom meeting via Canvas

49 participants visible at the same time
Use breakout rooms to facilitate discussion
Use the whiteboard or polling functionalities to stimulate interaction

TestVision

Licenced to VU

Expert

Develop Question Banks
Develop Exams
Various Question Types incl. open ended

Very secure
Full Psychometric Analysis

Only use under supervision of Faculty Key-user

Where can I get further support for online education?
VU offers several services for free to further assist you in developing your online education:

Contact Teaching Support Desk for assistance in course design.
Visit VU Education Lab's daily online consultation session.
Fill out our contact form for questions about didactics, assessment, online proctoring, tools or video.

In case the Frequently Asked Questions do not cover your question, please fill out our contact form.

Want to know more?

Variations on Written Assignments

VU Quality ambitions for online education