Exams in ACE

We have introduced several new features in ACE 2.0 that provide greater security and ease of use for exams.

Preparing the exam

1. Enter the exam questions in the question bank.
2. On your user home page, press Add course to create a new course that students will use only for the exam. Uncheck the box that enables the course, check the box that indicates that the course will be used for exams, and check the box that enables you to use student ID numbers. If your school uses a term for the student ID number other than "student ID number", enter it as well.
   • If you are going to offer the exam at more than one time, create a separate course for each exam offering. Incorporate the time of each exam into the name of each course.
3. Assemble the questions that you wrote into assignments, flagging the assignments as exams.
   • If you are going to use attempt-dependent grading parameters to assign different point values to different questions, put questions that will be worth different point values into different assignments.
   • Set the due date and time for each assignment to the end time of the exam.
   • Set attempt-dependent grading parameters for each assignment. Even if you do not want to decrease the number of points for multiple attempts, you can use the attempt-dependent grading parameters to give each question in an assignment a value greater than 1.
   • If you are going to offer the exam at more than one time, after you have created the assignments in one course, you may export them and reimport them into the other exam courses. Under the Assignments tab of the exam course containing the assignments, check Select all, press Export, and follow the instructions to download the file containing the assignments to your hard drive. Then enter the second exam course. Under the Assignments tab, press Import, browse to the file on your hard drive, and press Upload. You will need to reenter the due dates and times and the attempt-dependent grading parameters.
4. Under the Enrollment tab, select Create exam IDs. Enter a number slightly greater than the number of students who will be taking the exam. Export the enrollment list to a spreadsheet and print the login IDs on slips of paper to distribute to students.
   • If you are going to offer the exam at more than one time, create enough exam IDs in each course for the number of students who will be taking the exam at that time.

Starting the exam

1. Give one slip of paper bearing a random login ID to each student about to take the exam. Tell the students that the password is identical to the login ID. Some students will disregard instructions and use their regular login IDs or passwords. When they call for help, explain that they have failed to follow instructions.
2. Instruct students to press My profile after they log in and change the student name and student ID number associated with the random login ID to their own. (They may change the password, as well.) Some students will disregard these instructions as well.
3. Instruct students to print and sign their names on their slips of paper and return them to you as they leave. This step will allow you to identify students who did not enter their name and student ID number in My profile. The signature will also help you identify ringers, if you suspect any.
4. If you are using attempt-dependent grading parameters, inform the students that ACE displays them on the assignment list page.
5. Remind students that they are responsible for submitting saved-but-unsubmitted responses before the exam is over. If a student has saved but not submitted a response to any assignment in the course, ACE provides a button on the assignment list page that allows the student to submit all such responses at one time. Note: The button works even after the exam has ended.
6. When you are ready to begin the exam, press My courses, press to the right of the exam course, check the box that enables the course, and save the change. Students who have already logged into ACE will need to press Refresh on the course list page (user home page) to see the exam course.

During the exam

1. If any student has technical trouble, you can grant that student an extension on all assignments without having to edit each assignment individually. Press Edit exam features on the assignments list page, click Extensions, enter the length of the extension (in minutes) next to the name of the appropriate student, and submit the change. ACE will overwrite all extensions on individual assignments with the information that you enter this way. You can also use this button to change the due time of all exam assignments for the whole class. Students will need to press the Refresh list button on the assignments list page to see any changes in their due times.
2. If a student "wastes" an attempt because of a technical glitch, you can reset the number of attempts. Press the Grade Book tab, click on the assignment number, click on the name of the student, click alter under the appropriate question, change the number of attempts, and press Alter this record now.

After the exam

1. Press My courses, press to the right of the exam course, and disable the course again.
2. If, under the Grade Book tab, you see a student named RandomStudent who has submitted responses to the exam, it means that a student who took the exam failed to press My profile and enter his or her correct name and student ID number. The first name of RandomStudent is the login ID of that student, so you can find the student's name by finding the slip of paper that you collected after the exam that bears that random login ID. However, the student's real name still needs to be entered into ACE, because ACE will be unable to transfer a student's work from the random login ID to the regular login ID if the student has not entered her name and student ID number in the profile of the random login ID. To remedy the situation, you can login under the random login ID and change the student's name and student ID number yourself, or you can email the student and request that she do it herself.
3. If you assigned any questions that require human grading, press the Grade Book tab and click on the number of the assignment that contains these questions. ACE will show ??? for ungraded questions. Press Hide names to make the students anonymous, and click on a student ID number. Click alter under a question that requires grading, read the response, enter a grade between 0 and 1, and press Alter this record now. ACE will apply the attempt-dependent grading parameters for that assignment to the grade that you enter. Repeat for each student.
4. After you have graded all questions, export the grades as a spreadsheet in case anything goes awry in the next step.
5. Under the Enrollment tab, choose Transfer exam work. Choose the regular course in which the students are enrolled with their regular login IDs and passwords, and choose whether you want ACE to use names, student ID numbers, or both to match enrollees in the exam course to enrollees in the regular ACE course. ACE will match as many students as it can, and, if you approve of the matches, it will then transfer the students' work from their random login IDs to their regular login IDs. If any random login IDs remain unmatched, for example because of typographical errors, ACE will allow you to match them up manually. ACE will also ask your permission to delete any unused random login IDs.
6. Export the grades as a spreadsheet.
7. Press My courses, press to the right of the exam course, and enable the course again. Students will now be able to log in with their usual login IDs and see their exam results.

Miscellaneous comments

On the assignments list page, links to two downloadable files follow each exam assignment.

• The first link is to a table of all student responses to each question in the assignment, including student name, question number, response number, and response string. You may use this file to look at students' responses to questions prior to their final responses. The information may be useful for verifying student claims of a correct response being marked wrong, for catching copiers, etc. If you use Microsoft Office, open the file in Word, not Excel. (Excel improperly starts a new table cell at every return character, whereas Word does not.)
• The second link is to a table of all student entries into the exam course, including student name, IP address, and time of login. You may use this file to verify that no one logged into the exam from an unauthorized location.

In the Pearson version of ACE, in order to prevent unscrupulous instructors from distributing random login IDs to students so the students can avoid purchasing access keys, randomly generated login IDs become unusable after two weeks. However, the instructor is still able to see the work of the students who used those IDs.