- Online Exams 2025 recommended settings
- Online Exams folders and information on Ultra courses
- Online Exams Practice course
- Guidance for Students
Online Exams 2025 recommended settings
Programme Admins:
All the information regarding the exam type, submission type and specific tool recommendations are covered in the guide Recommended assessment tools for online exams 2025.
For guidance and support, please see “Useful links” below.
If you need a refresher training session on “How to create and Manage different type of Submission points” in Blackboard Original courses, please raise a support ticket via self service portal, or by emailing to dts@reading.ac.uk with subject “Request for Online Exams Refresher Training – TEL”.
Academics:
If you have questions about the settings being applied for your module exams, please check these with your Programme Administrator in the first instance.
Useful guides:
- Recommended assessment tools for online exams
- EMA Integration for Online Exams
- Turnitin: Set up a Turnitin Assignment
- Blackboard Tests Settings
- Blackboard Assignment: Set up an Assignment
- Gradescope: Create a Gradescope assignment
Online Exams in the Assessment area
In your Ultra course there are Online exam folders in the Assessment area on the template that are hidden from student view. These folders will be used for the exams on the course.
Please make the Important Exam Information visible to students before the exam period begins.
Online exams are set up within the Ultra course template by following the workflow:
- There is one “Online Exam [title]” folder per course, create additional folders is there is more than one exam.
- Add the exam name to the Online Exam folder (replacing the text [title])
- Add the Release Conditions to the folder (9am/2pm to exam end time)
- Adjust/add folder description to include exam date, start time and end time. Draw attention to fixed start/finish exams.
- Set up submission point, or series of submission points if one is required per question, inside the folder for that specific exam.
- Make sure the submission point(s) are Visible to Students (they will be hidden inside the folder).
- For Turnitin ensure the start date is in the past.
- For Blackboard Tools ensure the submission point is manually changed to Visible to Students
- After the exam has passed make all the submissions point Hidden from Students. This can be done in the course content or Gradebook.
Online Exams Practice courses
Practice courses will be created and made available by early December 2024.
All students sitting exams have access to an Online Exams Practice course.
The Practice course is intended to give students the opportunity to test downloading and uploading documents, understand what instructions they will see on exam papers, as well as to identify and resolve any technical issues ahead of the exam period.
All types of submission points are available, and this will allow the students to test the different exam types Schools will have set. The Practice area will be open throughout the exams period and students can access it, and submit to it, as many times as they want.
Students on modules using Gradescope for exams will also have been provided with access to a Gradescope practice exam.
If you wish to check out the resources that students have access to, you can can self-enrol on any of the Practice courses.
- View list of Online Exams practices courses.
Guidance for students
Guide last updated on November 18, 2024
