Online exams can save teachers a remarkable amount of time. Nobody has to type up and photocopy a question paper, nobody has to sit with a red pen through a stack of answer sheets, and students get their results quickly. But the first time a school tries it, a lot of practical questions come up. Can students cheat? What if the timer misbehaves? And how do the marks get onto the report card?
Here is what I would look at before running your first online test.
Be clear about what online exams are for
Online exams are very good at some things and poor at others. They suit weekly and unit tests, practice papers before board exams, entrance tests for new admissions and quick checks after finishing a chapter: anywhere the questions have clear right answers. Long written answers, practicals and oral assessments still belong on paper or in person.
Most schools end up using both, and that is fine, as long as all the marks end up in the same gradebook. If online results live in one tool and written results in another, someone ends up copying numbers across by hand, which is exactly the kind of work you were trying to get rid of.
The question bank is where the real saving is
Your first online paper takes about as long to prepare as a paper one. The saving comes afterwards, once there is a good bank of questions to draw from. So look closely at how the question bank works.
Teachers should be able to organise questions by subject and topic and search them, so building next month's test takes minutes rather than an evening. The bank should support the kinds of question you actually set, such as questions with one correct answer, questions with more than one, and true or false. Science and maths teachers will need diagrams. And there should be a way to bring in questions from a spreadsheet, because nobody wants to retype years of old papers one question at a time.
Paper settings that match how you really test
A paper is more than a list of questions. You will want to set a time limit, split the paper into sections, and sometimes use negative marking, particularly if you are preparing students for competitive entrance exams that use it. For questions with more than one correct answer, decide in advance whether a partly correct answer earns partial marks or nothing at all.
Where the clock lives matters
This is a detail most people never think to ask about. If the timer runs only in the student's browser, a student can sometimes pause it, refresh the page or change the time on their device. Ask the vendor whether the clock is kept on the server. If it is, the paper closes on time no matter what happens on the student's computer or phone.
Be honest about cheating
It is worth being straightforward with parents and staff here. Unless the software includes proctoring, such as webcam monitoring, a student sitting a test at home can look things up or get help from someone in the room. No setting changes that.
The practical answer is to match the setting to the stakes. For any test that counts towards a final result, run it in a computer lab or classroom with a teacher present. Keep unsupervised online tests for practice and low-stakes checks, where the point is learning rather than ranking.
How online exams work in CrossKloud School
In CrossKloud School, teachers build a question bank organised by subject and topic, with search. Questions can have one correct answer or several, or be true or false, can include diagrams, and can be imported from a spreadsheet. Papers can be timed, divided into sections and use negative marking. The clock is held on the server, so a paper closes on time, and answers are graded automatically with the marks going straight into the gradebook. From there they feed report cards, which print on A4 in your school's own format.
It does not include proctoring, so we recommend supervised sittings for any exam that counts.
If you would like to try building a paper from your own questions, book a free demo.