FAQ Digital examination – Technical difficulties during an ongoing exam
Frequently asked questions about what to do if there are technical difficulties during digital exams.
Last reviewed March 3, 2025.
Can I ask a student to e-mail their answers in case of technical difficulties?
It is up to the examiner to decide if an e-mailed answer is valid.
What do I as an examiner do if the internet goes down during the examination?
If the Internet is down, this should be treated as if the fire alarm has gone off during an exam. In that case, the school must offer a re-exam. If just one student is experiencing technical difficulties, it is advantageous if the exam has been divided into sub-parts so that only one part of the exam has to be re-taken, for example via an oral exam.
What do I do if a student is having problems with images in a quiz or if the quiz is crashing?
Tell the students to reload the page in their web browser. The page can be reloaded without kicking you out from the quiz. If that does not work, try to change browser, Canvas should be used on the current version of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Safari. You could also recommend to clear the cache, but this may delete already entered answers, so it is a good idea to first take a screenshot of the answers before clearing the cache.
A student does not see the examination room in their Dashboard in Canvas, even though I can see that the student is enrolled in the room. What is wrong?
The Dashboard can only show up to 20 selected Canvas rooms. Students will find all the Canvas rooms they have access to if they go to "Courses" and then select "All courses".
Students are having trouble uploading their answers to the assignment in Canvas, what do I do?
If the assignment is still open for submissions you can ask the students to try submitting again.
If the submission time has run out the students are recommended to upload their answers to an OneDrive folder, which has been prepared by the examiner. You can ask students to also submit their anwers to the assignment at a later time, to facilitate the assessment. In that case, the examiner or teacher must open the assignment for submission again and communicate this to the students who uploaded their answers to OneDrive. If necessary, you can compare the answers uploaded directly at the end of the exam with what the student submitted at the later time.
The examiner prepares the OneDrive folder by following the instructions for creating a file request in OneDrive .