Summative Exam Principles

Owned by Neill Magill
Oct 25, 2022
3 min read

Question Locking

Reports such as 'Class Totals' relies on the current structure of a question as held in the question bank. Through experience we have found that if two different papers, across different years, use the same question and if the question is changed in the second year it will upset the reports of the previous year. As a result of this functionality has been hardwired into Rogo to 'lock' questions when a summative exam starts. This has the advantage that staff and external examiners can look back to assessments held in the past and see them exactly the same way as the students saw them.

Unlocking

Locked summative exam questions cannot normally be unlocked - this is by design. In certain circumstances users with SysAdmin role can override this by calling a paper with an unlock parameter:

https://rogo.uni.ac.uk/paper/details.php?paperID=7478&unlock=1

So the paper does not immediately lock again the start/end date will be set to 30 days in the future.

Summative Management

Summative management is an option intended for institutions that wish to centrally administer Rogo summative exams. In the past there have be occasions when different members of a team attached to a paper have altered the start time/date and it has been difficult to track when an exam was meant to be scheduled for.

To turn summative management on edit the cfg_summative_mgmt setting on the configuration screen.

Central Exams Office Staff

When turned on a new icon will appear in the 'Administrative Tools' screen called 'Summative Exam Scheduling'. When there are summative exams waiting to be scheduled a number in a red circle should be displayed next to this icon to show how many papers are waiting.

When this icon is selected a page should show all the summative exams that are still in the future that are scheduled and unscheduled. The screen is split into two with 'Unsheduled' listed first followed by a 'Scheduled' section. Unscheduled exams simply show a month they intend to run in whereas scheduled exams will show an actual time/date. Scheduled exams will also add lab information to the end of campus on this screen.

Double-clicking on an exam will display a details page showing all the information as set by the academic. This should provide enough information for the Exams Office to determine what size of computer labs is needed and on what campus. The paper owner (plus email) is included in case there are any queries.

Note: Staff in the central Exams Office should have their role set to SysAdmin to allow them to access the necessary screens.

Academic Staff

When summative management is turned on two things happen for academic staff:

  1. When creating a new Summative Exam academic staff loose the ability to specify start/end time/dates and the computer labs. Instead they see a form asking them to specify the academic session, the month required, cohort size, duration, campus and how many sittings. At this point when the paper is created start_date and end_date in the properties table are set to NULL.
  2. When changing settings in 'Edit Properties' for a summative exam the following settings are NOT available:
    • Session
    • Time Zone
    • Available from/to dates
    • Duration
    • Computer labs

Remote Summative

Available in Rogo 7.2

Summative exam can be set to be remote. A remote exam is treated as an open book exam by default.

Remote summatives:

  • must have a password set
  • do not require a lab to be set
  • can be set over multiple days
  • do not require invigilation, as such the exam timer starts automatically when the paper starts.
  • if the student has accommodations for breaks they can pause the exam timer


Rogo supports the use of Safe Exam Browser to lock a students desktop.