About Vives

As the largest University of Applied Sciences in West Flanders (Belgium), VIVES provides higher education and practice-oriented research. VIVES has five campuses (Bruges, Ostend, Kortrijk, Roeselare, Torhout), six subject areas, 1,250 staff members and 13,500 students, of whom 2,300 are distance-learning students enrolled on 25 different degree programmes.

Project details

VIVES has been using assessmentQ in and outside the classroom for more than a decade. When combined with proctoring, time and place are no longer a factor for students who want to take their exams remotely.

“We offer a very radical form of distance learning – some students never come to the campus. assessmentQ and ProctorExam are responding to this development.”

Koen Verhulst, Education Policy Officer

 

Koen Verhulst has been working at VIVES since 2000 and is responsible, among other things, for remote examinations: “One of my main tasks is to fine-tune the exams. We believe it’s very important to offer our students as much flexibility as possible. We also strive to measure knowledge in an efficient, qualitative and user-friendly way.”

Wide variety of question types

“The assessmentQ platform offers a wide range of possibilities and question types for creating an exam. We encourage our lecturers to jump onboard the assessmentQ train. It requires an initial effort to enter the questions and to create a database, but ultimately results in significant time savings. Thanks to assessmentQ, in 95% of the cases one of our lecturers manages to give feedback to students within one to two days.”

Lots of growth potential

In the 2017-2018 academic year, 21,346 examinations were taken as part of distance learning courses, of which 2,327 were taken digitally. Koen Verhulst: “There’s still considerable potential, but I think it’s important that it grow from the bottom up. Once you see the advantages, you don’t want to work in any other way. assessmentQ can also be easily connected to other systems such as our Square platform, which students use to register for exams.”

Online supervising with proctoring

VIVES introduced proctoring in 2015; an online method for supervising examinations, whereby the student no longer needs to go to the exam location.

Koen Verhulst: “At the time, ProctorExam was the only one who met our requirements. The software uses screen-sharing and two cameras – a webcam and another smartphone or tablet camera. In practice, the student registers via Square and our software then draws up a timetable in assessmentQ. The student then receives an e-mail about the technical conditions that must be met to take the exam: a webcam, microphone, speakers, internet connection and app on the smartphone. ProctorExam then sends a second e-mail with the login details. After this, students are given access to assessmentQ at the chosen time.

Greater exam flexibility

After the exam, the recordings are reviewed by ProctorExam. We then decide on any ‘incidents’. If we see something suspicious, it doesn’t automatically mean that the student should retake the exam. We pass on the information to the Exam Board, which then decides on the penalty to be imposed. So far, we have had very few cases of cheating. It’s an incredibly accurate system that works all over the world – it’s accurate to the second. This way, we can offer even greater flexibility and students can take the exam in peace and quiet, whenever and wherever they like. This solution also addresses the issue of mobility.”