Exams digital

Why will exams go fully digital?

The main reason to discontinue the paper version of exams is to prevent the risk of questions being exposed before the exam is taken. Until recently, the exams were printed at a small copy and printing service centre in the Harmony Building. The department secretaries could arrange this directly and there was a good overview of the whole process. This copy and printing service was discontinued by the RUG just before the summer. The exams must now be printed at Zernike in a large printing and copy centre where many people are involved. Then, the transport service has to deliver the exams to the porters of the Röling building, and the porters keep the exams until the department secretary can get them to store them away. This is a process with many steps and many people involved which has increased the risk of errors. During the examination period of block 1, there was a problem with one examination, but fortunately, it could still be fixed in time by making a new examination.

Such an error-prone process is unacceptable for guaranteeing the quality of our degree programmes. Exam questions should not leak out, and the risk of this happening should be minimised as much as possible. The paper process no longer meets the necessary requirements, and therefore, we are now switching to a fully digital process for digital exams. This is also how the other faculties of the RUG have been conducting their exams for several years already.

Please note that a small number of exams are still entirely on paper, these are smaller exams that are taken at another location. These exams will be printed at the Faculty and will continue to be offered on paper for the time being.

What will the new version of the exams look like?

The exam questions will now be presented in the digital exam environment in Brightspace. This was also done during the previous Covid regulations. Above the answer window will be the exam question, instead of just the number of the question. There will no longer be an additional paper version of the exam on which the exam questions are printed. This means you will read the question from the screen, and below the question, you can then type in the answer.

It is unfortunately not yet possible to highlight text within the digital exam environment. The faculty has applied to the provider to implement this functionality. The exam cover sheet with your table number is still available on paper. You can use this as scrap paper if you wish.

Last update: 15-12-2023