Authors and Examination System

The service team for Digital Learning and Teaching provides the e-examination system in cooperation with the Economic and Social Sciences computer centre (WiSo-RZ). It is based on the ILIAS open source learning platform and has all the necessary expansions for realisation of electronically-based examinations, e.g. a wide spectrum of types of question and a printout of the examinations. The system is also optimal for user-friendliness and the prevention of tampering. ILIAS is used by the universities of Gießen, Hannover, Cologne, Mainz and Marburg and under continual development by the community of users. The service for Digital Learning and Teaching also makes site-related adaptations, e.g. as required by the tutors and students.

Preparing an examination

ILIAS organises the questions into sets of questions (e.g. themed), which the tutors can easily edit using the web-based platform. This enables repeated and shared use of questions and review by colleagues. Starting with the sets of questions the respective examinations are prepared taking into account whether the sequence of questions or even of answers should be varied for each examinee, in order to prevent copying by neighbouring examinees. In addition the person responsible for the examination presents complete lists of the participants, so that they can be input in the system and individual access data can be prepared.

Conduct of examination

After logging on to the system the examinees have exclusive access to the appropriate examination, no other ILIAS management system elements are available. The answers are not stored locally on the individual input device but centrally on the examination server. If a computer fails, the examination can easily be resumed on a reserve unit simply by logging in again.

Analysis and Archiving

As a rule closed questions are analysed automatically in ILIAS. If necessary (e.g. if there are additional correct answers which were not conceived when the question was written) all types of question can be manually marked, with the points input into the system and included in the total result. In principle open questions are marked by the person responsible for the examination manually, using the system to input notes and comments.
In order to obtain a legally-secure examination document, the examinations are printed out after “handing in”, signed by the examinees and archived by the person responsible for the examination. Finally the results are exported for entry in the exam administration system and notification, and sent to the tutors. In addition, key data relevant to reviewing the examination results, such as average marks and degree of difficulty of individual questions, are calculated by the system.