Digital examinations
Digital Examinations at ETH Zurich are carried out in various requirement-specific scenarios. They take place in authentic subject-related examination environments in ETH computer examination rooms or in lecture halls and seminar rooms on students' laptops (Bring Your Own Device – BYOD). A modular approach covers the entire range of examination scenarios including the design of authentic, subject-specific examinations with complex real-life tasks. Together with the Unit for Teaching and Learning (UTL) and Academic Services (AkD) we support lecturers along the whole process of digital examinations.
To ensure the necessary capacity, applications for new digital examinations on ETH computers must reach EduIT by the last Sunday before the previous semester begins. This way, the examiners receive EduIT’s decision in time before the correction period for lecturers and examiners ends. The application deadlines are:
- End of week 7 for the fall semester
- End of week 37 for the spring semester
Later applications will be evaluated for the following year (or semester).
If you are interested in conducting a digital examination, please fill in the application form and contact the Unit for Teaching and Learning, the Digital Examinations Service or the teaching specialists in your department. Please note that the examination support must be informed immediately of any students with disability compensations for performance assessments to ensure the best possible implementation. At all locations for digital examinations on ETH computers dedicated examination rooms for disability compensations are available, however these must be reserved in advance.
Safe Exam Browser
Safe Exam Browser (SEB) is an open-source software that locks down the exam computer with a kiosk component and enables access to the Moodle quiz module with a browser component. The kiosk component ensures that no unauthorised digital resources (websites, programs, files, system functions) can be accessed during the exam. By configuring the kiosk component, access to resources such as locally installed third-party applications, web applications or websites can be granted specifically for the exam. SEB is an open-source project developed by EduIT at ETH Zurich and is funded by the external page SEB Alliance.
Moodle examination environment
The external page quiz module of the Moodle learning management system is used as the central examination tool at ETH Zurich. For teaching and examinations ETH Zurich operates two separate Moodle instances. The Moodle exam instance is optimized in terms of functionality, security and performance to meet the requirements of the exam condition and supports all exam-relevant processes from question creation to exam conduction, grading, statistical analysis and exam viewing.
Moodle's quiz activity offers a variety of external page question types and functions for organizing the exam workflow. There are over ten question types with options of text input, drag-and-drop, single or multiple choice and file upload. Mathematical expressions can be displayed with LaTeX and for more complex mathematical or programming-based examination tasks, Moodle offers integration with the computer algebra system external page STACK and the computer science learning environment CodeExpert.
Examinations with STACK
external page STACK is a computer-aided assessment system for mathematics and other scientific and engineering disciplines (STEM fields). STACK can be used for exercises and exams via a specific Moodle question type and enables the automated assessment of algebraic expressions based on their mathematical properties. In addition, parameters of STACK tasks can be randomised so that students receive the same tasks with different values. STACK also supports individualized, answer-specific feedback to students.
Examinations with Code Expert
Code Expert is an online programming environment for lessons and examinations developed at the Department of Computer Science at ETH. Code Expert is integrated into the digital examination via a Moodle question type. Code Expert supports a variety of programming languages (Python, Java, gcc, etc.). Code Expert enables direct feedback during the exam by allowing students to run their code against predefined test cases and analyses (both hidden from the students). Code Expert supports both fully automated grading based on predefined test cases and efficient semi-manual grading, which allows conceptually correct answers with minor programming errors to be taken into account.
Examinations with Jupyter Notebook
Jupyter Notebook is an open-source web application that offers a browser based interactive computing environment, which supports numerous programming languages (Python, R, Julia, Octave, etc.). In a notebook you can write code (input) as well as execute it directly to create videos, HTML, images, LaTeX and more (output).
Examinations with third-party applications (VDI Windows/Linux)
If subject-specific third-party applications such as Matlab, R/R-Studio, Eclipse, Stata, SPSS or Excel is explicitly desired during the exam, a setup based on Safe Exam Browser, a virtual desktop infrastructure ('VDI') and Moodle is used, in which access to said third-party applications is specifically granted. In addition, local or web-based resources such as empirical data sets, language repositories, work templates or code templates can also be enabled. This way, authentic and specialized exams can be implemented securely. Besides the Windows-based standard environment with SEB and Moodle, a Linux-based environment is also available for examinations with third-party applications.
Open-book and project accompanying examinations with polybox
Open-book examinations have a long tradition at ETH: approximately every second written examination at ETH is a variant of an open-book examination. The Digital Examinations Service enables secure open-book exams on ETH computers. The use of (handwritten) notes, lecture notes, specialized textbooks, exercise series from the semester or online databases is explicitly permitted in open-book examinations. At the same time, it must be ensured that students' actual own work is graded and that students cannot exchange information with each other or with third parties outside of the examination. For secure digital open-book examinations, lecturers create a folder on polybox, upload the open-book resources there and give students read but not write access to the folder. They then send the URL to the polybox folder to the Digital Examinations Service, which whitelists it in the exam environment. In addition, students can use their own notes or electronic documents created in project or group work during the examination by granting them temporary write permissions in the polybox folder to upload the materials before the examination. In courses with a strong focus on project or group work, this setup enables a close alignment between teaching and examination.
Open-internet examinations
Would you like to give your students free access to web-based resources and at the same time ensure that defined rules - no exchange with other students during the examination, no ghostwriting, etc. - are adhered to? In the open internet setup, students have largely free access to the internet. Individual examination progress is recorded using screenshots and metadata and can be monitored in real time and with a time delay in addition to the usual exam supervision in the room. These functionalities have been newly developed for SEB and SEB-Server in compliance with data protection regulations. The open internet setup thus offers a secure way of carrying out complex technical work processes, which require maximum freedom in the choice of problem solution, in an examination context.
Examinations with AI
Would you like to have your students solve AI-supported programming tasks in the exam? Do you want your students to conduct an anamnestic interview with an AI that simulates a patient as part of the exam? Do you have other innovative ideas for the use of AI in your exam? Our tools and setups for digital examinations offer a wide range of options for safely embedding generative AI tools in the examination environment. Please contact us or the Department for Teaching and Learning at an early stage to arrange a pilot project.
To make an exam versatile, it can be structured into multiple parts or phases. For example, in a first closed-book part, specialized knowledge can be efficiently assessed across the board using single-choice questions. This is immediately followed by a practical second part that goes into greater depth by giving students access to subject-specific third-party applications (e.g. R/R-Studio, Matlab, Excel) and/or documents (e.g. specialist articles, case studies) and tasks that focus on complex problem-solving skills. This is made technically possible by multi-phase examinations. The examination environment is reconfigured between the examination parts with a single click, so that different working environments and tools are available in the different parts.
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