Scanned exams to Canvas
To use KTH Import Exams, go to the examination room connected to the exam and start the function. The function first prepares the examination room with a front page and an assignment in which the exams will be uploaded. Afterwards, the exams can be imported. You can leave the function at any time and come back to it later.
How KTH Import Exams works
Usually, the results of most campus exams are scanned to be documented by a system called Windream. The function KTH Import Exams gives the examiner the possibility to scan the exams to a Canvas assignment which can then be assessed in SpeedGrader. In KTH Import Exams, you first activate the function to import the exams in four steps and then import the students' writings in three steps.
The function can be run by people who have the roles of teacher, examiner or course coordinator in the examination room.
Note! It is not possible to use KTH Import Exams in merged examination rooms.
Find and start the function
You can find the function in the examination room for the exam in question. If you do not find the examination room, keep in mind that only the examiner for a course can see the examination room when it has the default settings. Read more about examination rooms .
In the examination room, in the left navigation menu option, select the option "KTH Import Exams". Open the app by pressing the "Launch app" button. Allow the feature to be used for your account (this only needs to be done the first time). The function now gives you instructions for preparing the examination room and for syncing the scanned exams. You can when you want to leave the function to continue later at another time.
Prepare the Canvas room in four steps
Before the students' exams can be imported, the examination room must be prepared with the function KTH Import Exams. This gives the examination room the right basic settings to be able to receive the information from KTH's exam scanning system Windream. It is possible to edit the text that the students will see.
The four steps let you choose settings and design what the students will eventually see, and include the following:
- A front page that welcomes the students is created for the examination room. If you have already created a front page specific to your examination, you can choose to keep it by pressing the "Skip this step" button.
- The examination room is published so that the students can see it.
- A Canvas assignment for the exams is created in the examination room. The assignment must be created through the app to get the correct settings and connections before importing. However, the text in the assignment can be edited before the students' submissions are imported in the same way as ordinary assignments in Canvas are edited.
- The assignment is published so that the students can see it but without it being open for submissions from the students.
The examination room is now ready to receive scanned exams. You can leave the app whenever you want and edit the imported texts, but it is recommended that you look through the room in this phase before the students' work is imported.
Import the students' exams
You choose when it is time to import the exams by activating the sync in KTH Import Exams. The sync can, if necessary, be carried out several times without affecting already assessed results. The sync takes a while, you can leave the page and come back later to see how the importwent.
During the import, the assignment in Canvas will be published and opened to receive the scanned exams that are loaded. After the import, information is given about any problems that have arisen during the import. If any unexpected problem occurs, contact the examination administration for your school.
The assignment in Canvas will be opened for submissions through the function, and when all exams scanned so far have been imported into the assignment in Canvas, the assignment will be closed. All exams will be marked as submitted exactly at the same time. If a student should happen to upload something to the assignment during the short time window it is open, the student's upload will be marked as submitted late and it is easy to see which document comes from the exam through the app KTH Import Exams.
As soon as an exam has been synced to Canvas, the assessment work can begin. Learn more about how to assess assignments in Canvas with SpeedGrader .
It is possible to run KTH Import Exams several times, for example if an exam was not possible to import at first.
Short video explanation about KTH Import Exams
The video (1 min 36 s) shows how KTH Import exams work, as the steps described above. Note that the video is silent.
- First it is shown how to find and start the function
- Then the four steps to prepare the examination room for the import are shown
- Finally the import is started and completed, and results page for the import is shown.
Go to video: Short introductory film for KTH Import Exams (KTH Play)
The function’s development
The underlying reason for the project KTH Import Exams is to let teachers avoid handling large amounts of paper when conducting exams and instead handle results and assessment digitally. Digital assessment makes it easier for students to access the assessment and makes it possible to sync the result directly to Ladok instead of manually entering results.
The project to produce KTH Import Exams has carried out a number of pilots in 2021 and developed from there. Some examples of design choices are:
- Create value quickly, detailed settings and more advanced features are planned to be developed at a later date so that teachers will quickly have the opportunity for digital assessment.
- The exams are only read into Canvas if they are going to be assessed there. The examiner or teacher decides when / if the scanned exams are to be imported.
- The function works as an LTI app and the exams are imported into examination rooms so that the benefits of the right settings of, for example, Manual grade posting policy and the right grading scheme can be used.
- Personal identity numbers shall not be necessary for functionality. This enables the system to work together with anonymous exams once that project has been developed.
- Masking of names and personal identity numbers to anonymize the exams is desirable to implement but proved not feasible as students do not always write the information in the right places and the area covered risks covering part of the solution to a task.
If you want to give feedback or need support to handle KTH Import Exams, contact it-support@kth.se .