Step by step prepareation for "At-Home" Exam -- by Roberto Pelayo

Many of you are opting for the “at home” final exam for some of your classes (where students take the test at home, write their solutions on paper, and scan/upload their answers).  This may require some new steps (for both faculty and students).  So, I’ve prepared step-by-step instructions for setting up a basic version of this.  Those of you fluent in Canvas can skip this email.  Those of you who are new to Canvas, creating assignments, and asking students to scan/upload a file may want to take some time to read this.

The below has 5 different sections:

1) Creating Your Canvas Final Exam

2) Your Students Taking their Test

3) Your Students Uploading the Test

4) Preparing your Students for the Final

5) Grading the Exam

**Creating Your Canvas Final Assignment** 

In order for your students to upload an at-home test to Canvas, a Canvas “assignment” needs to be created.  To do so, do the following:

• Upload a .pdf copy of your final to your “Files” for the course.  To do this, find “Files” in the left sidebar and upload a copy in one of the folders.  Remember which folder you used. Note that student may see the files even they are "unpublished". If you wish to restrict files from student viewing until a specific time, you can read the following document. https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-12771-415241391
• Now it’s time to create your assignment.  Click on “Assignments" in the Left Sidebar
• In the upper-right hand corner, press the “+ Assignment” blue button.  (You may want to appropriate place this in one of the ‘groups’ if you are using groups of assignments).
• Give the assignment a title (e.g., Final Exam)
• In the main body of the assignment, let your students know that this is the Final exam, and **provide a link to the Final exam you uploaded earlier**.  To do this, go to “Files” on the UPPER RIGHT of the screen, find your final exam file, and click on it.    This will paste a link within the body of the assignment.  This is what students will click on to view the .pdf of the final exam
• Points: Assign a number of points to the exam
• Assignment Group: Put the Final in the appropriate group (if you use these)
• Display grade as: Points is probably best
• **This is important** Submission Type:  Select Online from the dropdown, then click on “File Uploads”.  This is what enables students to upload files to canvas.
• Group Assignment and Peer Reviews: Leave Unchecked
• **This is important** Assign: Choose “EVERYONE”
• Due: set the due date and time.  It may be wise to give the students an extra 20-30 min ‘grace period’ in case they have problems with the technology.
• Available: Set the time you want the assignment to be available and when it is too close.
• Then, click on “Save and Publish”  (Important: Make sure it is published so that it will be viewable to students.

Note: There are various options and individual tweaks you can make to the above.  For example, if you want to give a student a special time (because of DSC etc), when you are in the “Assign” part of the process, there is a “+Add” option that will allow you to type in a students’ name and give them different start/stop times.  Also, you may not want to post the Final exam in the Files part.  You may then want to just send them all an email at the appropriate start time with a .pdf as an attachment.  An “Announcement” may work better, but I haven’t tried that.

**Your Students Taking the Test**

• Students should be in a quiet room, by themselves for the duration of the exam.  Make sure they plan for this.
• When the exam time begins, a student will open the assignment and open up your .pdf. 
• A student will then take the test.  There are options here:
  • Require all students to print the exam (this is discouraged, as not all students have printers)
  • Have students write their answers on a blank piece of paper.  Ask them to use just one side (easier to scan later)
  • Have students pre-print (before the final) a “solution sheet”, which is essentially a copy of your test, but without the questions.  This will help to ensure uniformity in the submissions
• Monitor your email during the exam time.  Questions will come up!  Tell students you will be available via email
• Make clear what they can and can’t do during the test (use notes, look online, etc).

**Your Students Uploading their Test**

• After they have completed their exams, they should use a scanner or scanning app on their phones.  Good options are dropbox and CamScanner (free).  Others (free and paid) exist.  Students should get used to using these for Spring 2020.
• **Make sure students consolidate their scans into a single .pdf file.  It is much easier if they just upload 1 .pdf file
• Students can upload multiple files into the Canvas submission, but this is messier.
• Students will then need to upload their scan to Canvas.  This may require sending the scan from their phone to their laptop (via email, for example), then using the computer to upload the file.

**Preparing Your Students for the Final**

• The trickiest part of this is the scan/upload process. Have students practice with this.
• Create a “Practice Final Upload” Assignment (worth zero points) with settings similar to the test.  This is essentially a dummy assignment to let them know what the upload process will feel like.
• Have students take multiple pages of whatever paper they have lying around, scanning it with their app, consolidating it to their phone, and eventually uploading it to Canvas to your “practice Final Upload” assignment.  
• Have students let you know if they encounter any difficulties.  

**Grading The Exam**

• After the exams are done, you can now start to look at / grade student submissions.  
• Click on “Assignment” on the left sidebar.  Then, find your Final Exam assignment.  Click on it.
• Look to the Upper Right part of the screen.  These give you the options for how to look at the submissions
  • 1) Download Submissions: This will generate a .zip file that contains all of the student submissions.  Canvas automatically names the files with the student names.
  • 2) Speedgrader: This is the easiest way to view the submissions online without downloading anything.  There is even an option for inputting a grade directly from SpeedGrader (but this frequently is best used by setting up a Rubric).  
• You can also input grades by going to the “Grades” link in the left-hand sidebar.  You can directly input grades on that page under the Final assignment.