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Inspera Feedback Release

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Inspera Feedback Release

Module Teams can release student feedback on their auto-marked and manual-marked Inspera Digital Exams. The settings to use in Inspera for feedback release and how to make the feedback available for students are outlined in sections below.

Inspera Digital Exams are supported by the Digital Assessment Team within LTDS. If you need information non-specific to feedback release, we have a dedicated colleague facing webpage. Support for students is also available on our student facing webpage.

Transferring Grades to Canvas Gradebook

Once you have confirmed the final grades in the Inspera Grade area, the numerical marks are sent to the Canvas Gradebook. You’ll need to make this visible to students in the same way you would for any Canvas Assignment. Initially all marks will be shown in the Gradebook with the crossed-out eye icon.  

The date of the assignment availability would also need to be altered. The Digital Exams Team set up the availability on Canvas to match the exam duration (with any extra time included). The ‘available until’ date would therefore need altered to allow students to access feedback until a specific date. 

If you need more information, check out the Inspera Guidance Course on Canvas which colleagues can self-enrol onto. See the page called Confirming marks in Inspera and posting to Canvas.  

Please note that the Gradebook will likely reflect marks as a proportion. The Digital Exams Team set up exams with the points in the Canvas assignment set as 100 as standard.  

Finally, please ensure the Grades area on Canvas is accessible for students. If it is hidden, they won’t be able to see their grades in the Gradebook. 

Inspera's Candidate Report

The Candidate Report can allow students to see full details of their marks awarded, including the correct answers for auto marking, marks awarded per question (auto and manual marked questions) and their overall score. Individual or cohort wide comments can also be released on manually marked questions. 

Regardless of what specific level of feedback you’d like to release, you will need to ensure you enable the ‘Candidate Report’ option. You can follow the instructions below to enable this. 

  1. Go to the Deliver area for your Inspera exam. 
  2. Scroll down to 'options'. 
  3. Under the ‘general settings’ section, tick ‘Enable Candidate Report’ - this is required for students to be able to see any info about their test attempt. You’ll then set further settings which controls the level of detail released.     

Further settings can then be applied in the ‘after test’ section under 'options' – the settings within this area control what a student can see in the Candidate Report. You can look at the different exam type examples below to see what additional settings you should apply based on the type of questions you have.

Further information on the Candidate Report can be found in the Inspera Help Center.

How to release feedback for your Inspera Digital Exams

Depending on what type of exam (formative v summative) and type of questions (auto and/or manually marked) that you have, the feedback settings you'll need to apply will differ. Check out the different types of exams below to see what settings to apply.

Formative Exams with Auto-Marked Questions

For formative exams with auto marked questions only, you may wish to set feedback to be released to students immediately. This is not possible for manually marked questions as these need to be marked before release. 

This would enable students to see full details of their marks awarded for practice or formative exams instantly, so they are able to build upon their experience and prepare for their summative exam. Feedback would include the correct answers for auto marking, marks awarded per question and their overall score or final results. The options needed to set this up are below.  

  1. Follow the steps in the above section named 'Inspera's Candidate Report' to enable the Candidate Report.
  2. Navigate to the 'After test' section and use the headings below to select the appropriate settings.

POST-SUBMISSION REVIEW

Allow candidate post-submission review’:

  1. This setting allows students to see their answers – it’s not on as a default, so it would need to be turned on. You can set a date to control when it’s visible, but it restricted by date only.
  2. Two options appear:
    • You can tick ‘Include correct answers and results page’ - this option is applicable when using auto-marked questions.
    • You can also tick 'Instant post delivery access' - this enables the feedback to be available to students as soon as they have submitted their formative exam.
  1. Scroll to 'Final results' and tick this. 
  2. Finally, scroll down to 'Marks' and tick this.
Summative Exams with Auto-Marked Questions Only

The different settings below explain what options you can select to enable feedback on auto-marked questions.

  1. Follow the steps in the above section named 'Inspera's Candidate Report' to enable the Candidate Report.
  2. Navigate to the 'After test' section and use the headings below to select the appropriate settings.

POST-SUBMISSION REVIEW

‘Allow candidate post-submission review’:  

  • This setting allows students to see their answers – it’s not on as a default, so it would need to be turned on.
  • You can set a date to control when it’s visible, but it restricted by date only.
  • There are then two optional settings:
  • 1. ‘include correct answers and results page’ - with this ticked you can allow students to see correct answers to questions. Students can see the correct answer in addition to their own answer to questions. 
  • 2. ‘Instant post delivery access’ - If this was ticked before students take the exam, they would be able to see their feedback immediately when they have submitted. This option could be useful for formative tests with auto marked questions but for summative tests, we advise this is not ticked as you may wish to review and amend auto-marks.

FEEDBACK OPTIONS

  • Feedback options are available if your test includes any auto marked questions with automated feedback. This feedback is something that would be added when you are authoring your questions when creating your questions set.
  • If you set up any general feedback for any questions, you can tick ‘include general feedback per question’ and this feedback would be released in the Candidate Report.
  • If you set up any feedback on alternatives (answers), you can tick ‘include feedback on alternatives’ and this feedback would be released.
  • This is not very commonly used, but there is more information on this within a section below.

FINAL RESULTS

  • Ticking the 'final results’ option shows student their total raw mark in Inspera.  
  • The Digital Exams Team recommend sharing mark information on Canvas Gradebook instead, where you can amend the Canvas assignment ‘points’ to the total marks - if you want the raw mark visible.

MARKS

  • By selecting the ‘show achieved mark for per question’, this shows students their actual breakdown of what mark they've received for each question.  
Summative Exams with Manual-Marked Questions Only

The different settings below explain what options you can select to enable feedback on manually marked questions.

  1. Follow the steps in the above section named 'Inspera's Candidate Report' to enable the Candidate Report.
  2. If markers have written comments which are directed at the cohort or to individual students, you can share these using the ‘Share Comments with Candidate’ settings under ‘after test’.

SHARE COMMENTS WITH CANDIDATE

  • This applies to manually marked questions, and you would select ‘shared with candidate’ to release comments made in manual marking.  
  • If you are selecting this setting when using auto marked questions as well as manually marked, please be aware of the following: If there are auto-marked questions in addition to manually marked, and you select this option, the correct answers will become visible to the student even if the other options relating to auto-marked feedback release are not selected. 
  • If you don’t want students to see the auto marked questions and answers, e.g. if a bank of MCQs is re-used, then do not select this option.  
Summative Exams with Both Auto and Manual-Marked Questions

The different settings below explain what options you can select to enable feedback on auto-marked and manually marked questions.

  1. Follow the steps in the above section named 'Inspera's Candidate Report' to enable the Candidate Report.
  2. Navigate to the 'After test' section and use the headings below to select the appropriate settings.

POST-SUBMISSION REVIEW

‘Allow candidate post-submission review’:  

  • This setting allows students to see their answers – it’s not on as a default, so it would need to be turned on.
  • You can set a date to control when it’s visible, but it restricted by date only.
  • There are then two optional settings:1. ‘include correct answers and results page’
  • With this ticked you can allow students to see correct answers to questions.
  • Students can see the correct answer in addition to their own answer to questions. 2. ‘Instant post delivery access’
  • If this was ticked before students take the exam, they would be able to see their feedback immediately when they have submitted.
  • This option could be useful for formative tests with auto marked questions but for summative tests, we advise this is not ticked as you may wish to review and amend auto-marks.

FEEDBACK OPTIONS

  • Feedback options are available if your test includes any auto marked questions with automated feedback. This feedback is something that would be added when you are authoring your questions when creating your questions set.
  • If you set up any general feedback for any questions, you can tick ‘include general feedback per question’ and this feedback would be released in the Candidate Report.
  • If you set up any feedback on alternatives (answers), you can tick ‘include feedback on alternatives’ and this feedback would be released.
  • This is not very commonly used, but there is more information on this within a section below.

FINAL RESULTS

  • Ticking the 'final results’ option shows student their total raw mark in Inspera.  
  • The Digital Exams Team recommend sharing mark information on Canvas Gradebook instead, where you can amend the Canvas assignment ‘points’ to the total marks if you want the raw mark visible.

MARKS

  • By selecting the ‘show achieved mark for per question’, this shows students their actual breakdown of what mark they've received for each question. 

SHARE COMMENTS WITH CANDIDATE 

  • This applies to manually marked questions, and you would select ‘shared with candidate’ to release comments made in manual marking.  
  • When you select this option, the correct answers for auto-marked questions will become visible to the student even if the above options relating to auto-marked feedback release are not selected. 
  • If you don’t want students to see the auto marked questions and answers, e.g. if a bank of MCQs is re-used, then do not select this option.

VIDEO DEMONSTRATIONS

Selecting your feedback settings

Formative Exams with Auto-Marked Questions
Summative Exams with Auto-Marked Questions Only
Summative Exams with Manual-Marked Questions Only
Summative Exams with Both Auto and Manual-Marked Questions

General Feedback Release

Markers can release a ‘common feedback’ statement to all students once all submissions have been graded. This common feedback should relate to the full exam. Feedback about specific questions can be shared using Page Notes. You can check out a video demo that covers 'page note' functionality. 

Important notes:

  1. Assessment feedback must be created before confirming marks. Once marks are confirmed, the option in Inspera will be greyed out.
  2. Assessment Feedback cannot be edited after the Candidate Report has been released to students.
How to release a common feedback statement

You can write and share your common feedback statement for students using the following instructions.

  1. Within the Inspera Grade tool, locate the Planner Workspace on the left-hand side.
  2. Select ‘Assessment Feedback’
  3. This allows you to provide feedback to all students using the following methods: 
    1. Text
    2. Audio 
    3. Attach a file
  4. Once you’ve created your feedback, click Save.
  5. For students to view this feedback on Inspera, you must enable the candidate report. In the Deliver area of Inspera, you will also need to select the appropriate the feedback release settings under ‘After Test’:
    1. ‘Enable general feedback for assessment’
    2. ‘Share assessment feedback with candidates

The following is an example of a Text feedback box:

How to make feedback viewable to students in Canvas

Making the assignment available in Canvas

To allow access to the candidate report for a limited amount of time, please follow the below settings:

  1. Access the course in Canvas 
  2. Select Assignments from the navigation area 
  3. Select the Inspera exam assignment and click Edit Settings 
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the settings and update the Available From and Available Until Date and Time to reflect when you would like the students to be able to access the Candidate report 
  5. Click Save

Preview viewing feedback as a student

In terms of what has been released for your students, it is possible ‘view’ how the Candidate Report will look to students after selecting your feedback release settings.

You can follow the steps below to view this:

  • Navigate to the Grade area for the Inspera exam you are releasing feedback for.
  • Go to Candidate Report (in the left hand side navigation space).
  • Toggle 'view report as candidate X' which appears in the top right corner.

If feedback settings need to be altered, you can go to Options > Deliver and ‘open test in Deliver’, which will return you to the exam setup area.  

Student access of digital exam feedback

Students should follow the below steps to view their feedback in Inspera:

  1. Students must click on the grey load button in the Canvas assignment (the same way they accessed their exam)  
  2. Once the grey load button is selected, Inspera will open
  3. Navigate to and click the 'view report' button

Students are able to:

  • view their exam entry on Inspera 
  • and download their exam entry from Inspera.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: My students' say they cannot access their candidate report what should I do?

A: Firstly, check that the Canvas assignment point available until date had been edited to be after the exam end; this must be edited to be the time you wish your students to see their feedback until. Secondly, check the assignment is published. Thirdly, you may wish to check if the assignment has ported to the 'past assignments' area and advise your students if this is the case. If still experiencing issues please contact digital.exams@ncl.ac.uk.

Q: I don't wish for my students to view certain questions within their candidate report, can I remove some questions from the feedback view?

A: This is not currently possible. Inspera's feedback release aims for transparency for all exam questions; however we have had certain users use a workaround of sorts. 

For example, you could ask ask personal tutors to review feedback with their tutee. To do this, release the feedback via the candidate report on Inspera, but do not make this available via the Canvas assignment date. Students would not be able to access their feedback directly but as long as the personal tutor is a Teacher or Teaching Assistant on the Canvas module they can view feedback on behalf of a student.

Q: Can students see their marks and the correct answers for each auto marked question, how would I enable this?

A: When editing the feedback settings in the Deliver area, be sure to tick ‘include correct answers and results page’.

Talk to us

digital.exams@newcastle.ac.uk
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