Exam Workflow Examples

As of release 5.89 of Vasto Educator, we have tweaked the exam settings based on user feedback over the past 3 months.

This section is to give some insight into what behaviour we would expect for all of the below workflows, with examples provided. For all of the exams below, we will assume that there are 3 sections. The first section is just auto-assessed questions, the second is just manually assessed questions and the third is a combination of auto-assessed and manually assessed questions. For all examples, this should be the default behaviour regardless of workflow when a student attempts an exam:

• Student accesses their exam for the first time and hits begin.
• They should be directed to a landing page for section 1 with a continue button.
• If indexing is enabled for the section, they can also individually access each question.
• When clicking continue, they will be directed to a question in section 1. If ordering is defined, it will be the first question of the section. If ordering is random, it may be a different question.
• Student then answers the questions. They should not be shown the same question twice, until they reached the end of the exam.
• After answering all section 1 questions, they will be directed to the section 2 landing page, which has the same behaviour as the section 1 landing page.
• They continue through all sections like this accordingly, until they reach the end of the exam. From here, we expect some differing behaviour. Consistently though, if there are manually assessed questions that are pending, all questions are locked for the time being. If there are no manually assessed questions and the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam with a final grade.

Default Workflow (no fail action selected)

Let’s say the assessor grades some of the questions as correct, and others they return to the student.

• If the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student will have a chance to retake all auto-assessed questions that are not correct yet (if any) and then they will have a chance to submit a new response for manually assessed questions that have been returned. Correctly marked manually assessed questions should be inaccessible.
• They will then reach the exam end which temporarily locks the exam again.
• Let us now say the assessor marks all manually assessed questions as incorrect. This will permanently lock those questions regardless of final grade.
• If the passing grade is not yet met, student can access any auto-assessed questions that haven’t been marked as correct yet. Otherwise, the exam is effectively locked with a final grade.
• If the passing grade is eventually met, the exam will be locked and a successful outcome is shown on course cover.

Retake Exam Workflow

Unlimited Attempts

Let’s say the assessor grades some of the questions as correct, and others they return to the student.

• If the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student will be able to access the questions that have been returned to them. They shouldn’t yet be able to access auto-assessed questions again.

Once the questions have been resubmitted, the assessor has access to grade them again. From here, one of two things can happen.

• If the passing grade is met, the exam gets locked down with a successful outcome.
• If the passing grade is not met, the exam logs gets wiped for this exam for this student meaning the student has to retake all questions (both auto-assessed and manual) regardless of whether they were previously marked as correct.

This process then repeats until a successful grade is met (given attempts are unlimited).

Note that even though exam logs gets wiped for manually assessed question, students will still have access to previous submission history as well as any assessor notes.

Limited Attempts

Let’s say the assessor grades some of the questions as correct, and others they return to the student.

• If the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student will be able to access the questions that have been returned to them. They shouldn’t yet be able to access auto-assessed questions again.

Once the questions have been resubmitted, the assessor has access to grade them again. From here, one of two things can happen.

• If the passing grade is met, the exam gets locked down with a successful outcome.
• If the passing grade is not met:
  • If attempt limit is not yet reached, the exam logs gets wiped for this exam for this student meaning the student has to retake all questions (both auto-assessed and manual) regardless of whether they were previously marked as correct. The attempts get incremented by 1.
  • If attempt limit is reached, the exam is locked and the exams logs are left as is so that the final grade is accurate.

Note that even though exam logs gets wiped for manually assessed question, students will still have access to previous submission history as well as any assessor notes.

Also note that assessors do have the ability to add an extra attempt for the student. This will also have the effect of clearing the exam logs so that the student has to start anew again.

Retake Questions or Retake Sections

We may work on this in the future, but for now, these fail actions can be treated as the same.

Unlimited Attempts

Let’s say the assessor grades some of the questions as correct, and others they return to the student.

• If the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student will be able to access the questions that have been returned to them. They shouldn’t yet be able to access auto-assessed questions again.

Once the questions have been resubmitted, the assessor has access to grade them again. From here, one of two things can happen.

• If the passing grade is met, the exam gets locked down with a successful outcome.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student should then have the ability to retake any auto-assessed questions that have not yet been marked as correct.

Once they get to the exam end again, they will be prompted to retake all failed questions. If they continue, this then allows them to retake all questions that have been graded as incorrect, whether they be auto-assessed or manually assessed.

This process will then loop until the student reaches a passing grade, due to the nature of unlimited attempts.

Limited Attempts

Let’s say the assessor grades some of the questions as correct, and others they return to the student.

• If the passing grade is met, that should lock the exam.
• If the passing grade is not met, the student will be able to access the questions that have been returned to them. They shouldn’t yet be able to access auto-assessed questions again.

Once the questions have been resubmitted, the assessor has access to grade them again. From here, one of two things can happen.

• If the passing grade is met, the exam gets locked down with a successful outcome.
• If the passing grade is not met:
  • If attempts haven’t been reached yet, an attempt is added and the student should then have the ability to retake any auto-assessed questions that have not yet been marked as correct. Once they get to the exam end again, they will be prompted to retake all failed questions. If they continue, this then allows them to retake all questions that have been graded as incorrect, whether they be auto-assessed or manually assessed.
  • If attempts have been reached, the exam is locked.
  • If attempts are reached and a passing grade is not yet met, the assessor does the ability to add an additional attempt.