Exam Invigilators IT Skill Requirement?

[supra21]

This has been going on for a while at the school I work at where the invigilators seemingly have no IT competency. We are called for pretty much every exam to help "login" to the computers and "open word". These are things that they apparently do not know how to do. We are sometimes asked to bring up a clock on the board the Invigilator does not have a link to which one they usually use. When exams are over computers, projector / board are left on and logged in. No matter how many times I bring this up my team and I are ignored. Anyone else experiencing this?

[network41]

All of the above . Total pain year in year out

[noelmm]

We have the same problem with our invigilators, most of them either do not know how to open a web page and log into the clock website we use or they simply won't. The setup of the laptop with clock etc each morning during exam season is now just part of my daily routine and only takes 10 minutes and at least I know it's done.

 

As for the student laptops for those users who requite one I wouldn't expect an invigilator to really touch them, we have it setup that we log them in with a specific account and exam WritePad starts automatically, the students then complete their work and press print and it prints to a shared printer in the room. Once everyone is happy that the work has printed the students leaves the room and we clear the work ready for the next exam and put the laptops away. I wouldn't consider any of this an invigilators job, nor would I want them to assist with it as they could make a genuine mistake and delete a students work before ensuring it had printed correctly etc.

[Mewdewgooboofoo]

I had this when i worked in one of my old schools,

 

with the invigilators for the school there where in the generation where it is understandable that they wouldn't know how to work a computer,

the schools exam officer understood but by herself she couldn't get 5 separate it rooms logged in to and setup with wordpad, in the time she had,

 

i ended up getting it all setup with Impero and got the invigilators in a routine,

 

they where printed out a diagram of the room so they know what PCs need turning on in a morning )wake on lan didn't work on our impero),

from there i logged in the pcs with the exam accounts from impero and then i used a command i sent though impero that would open up wordpad ready,

 

all they had to do then was plug in the USBs with the papers and load up the exam pdf.

 

sound long winded, but worked,

eventually the exam officer asked if i could show her what i was doing on impero and after a couple of goes and practice runs she got the hang of it and took over,

 

then never had to do anything with exams unless a pc wasn't working,

Edited February 1, 2022 by Mewdewgooboofoo

[supra21]

Sounds like you were working with a pro-active invigilator. The ones we have worked with do not see any of it as their responsibility. Even when they have apparently been told they just ignore and wait for someone from IT to arrive and do it for them.

To be clear I am not expecting them to know it all, but the basics of logging in and opening a blank word doc / opening exam software and putting a clock on the board, that's all.

[hardtailstar]

Nevermind the Invigilators! We have had exams recently where students do not know how to save!

[supra21]

Oh yes, unfortunately I have experienced this many times as well, add to that the few that do save the file do not name the document with any reference to their name......

[RLR]

Exams are such a pain and take up so much of my time now we need so many laptops with Word processing or listening files on. I spend a lot of time setting up exam laptops to login automatically from fresh boot. The laptops login to an exam account and boots into ExamWritePad automatically. This software forces them to put in their student details and forces them to save (as well as auto save every 30 seconds). Doing all this takes time to setup but saves a lot of hassle with invigilators not knowing what to do.

[titch]

Out of interest....and I don't mean to hijack the thread but roughly what percentage of students use a laptop? We are now up to about a third of students for English exams! It's really time-consuming when you factor in all the mocks etc as well. Edited February 1, 2022 by titch

[supra21]

Was not aware of ExamWritePad, this looks great. Even if it is only 30 seconds every little helps with this situation...

[supra21]

Can't give a % but it has been increasing and yes it is a nightmare as the amount of the laptops actually available is never taken into account.

[DrBeaker]

It's 2022. 2022!

 

Someone now 18 would have seen XP, Vista, Windows 8/8.1 and 10 OS's

 

Older folks would have Windows 2000, XP etc.

 

So this excuse of "I'm not very good with computers" is wearing a bit thin in 2022. I'm sick to death of hearing it myself. Time to learn, or get out.

[DrBeaker]

Exams are such a pain and take up so much of my time now we need so many laptops with Word processing or listening files on. I spend a lot of time setting up exam laptops to login automatically from fresh boot. The laptops login to an exam account and boots into ExamWritePad automatically. This software forces them to put in their student details and forces them to save (as well as auto save every 30 seconds). Doing all this takes time to setup but saves a lot of hassle with invigilators not knowing what to do.

 

Does this not take the onus off the student to be responsible and save their work though? As they go into adult life, no-one is going to do their work for them. Never quite understand this. Is not saving the work the same as scribbling over the exam paper?

[Ditto]

Does this not take the onus off the student to be responsible and save their work though? As they go into adult life, no-one is going to do their work for them. Never quite understand this. Is not saving the work the same as scribbling over the exam paper?

What baffles me, is for most exams there is an expectation that using a computer is a normal part of their individual schooling, so saving should be a norm. How many of the exams in the thread are accredited or are these mocks or similar. I hope the pupils aren't being asked to use PC's now to find they are not allowed in the real thing.

[noelmm]

Does this not take the onus off the student to be responsible and save their work though? As they go into adult life, no-one is going to do their work for them. Never quite understand this. Is not saving the work the same as scribbling over the exam paper?

 

 

You're right it does but you would be amazed at how many students during our mock exams couldn't even print a document. Using the autosave feature just gives the exams officer that peace of mind and since using it we haven't had any one lose their work. I remember a few years back a student sat an exam (real GCSE paper) and afterwards simply shut down their laptop and didn't save or print the work (they must have ignored and prompt to save their work) and lost everything, it caused so many issues that I wouldn't want that to happen again.

[paulkerton]

Schools just want bodies at this point. It's a job that pays minimum wage and a role that schools are struggling to fill as the job market is in the hands of the employee right now - to demand certain skills of people and not pay them for the skills is just not feasible. Edited February 2, 2022 by paulkerton

[Zammo]

Does this not take the onus off the student to be responsible and save their work though? As they go into adult life, no-one is going to do their work for them. Never quite understand this. Is not saving the work the same as scribbling over the exam paper?

 

No it's not the same

 

One is a deliberate act of destruction, the other could be forgetfulness or similar due to nerves

 

This is a young person's future we are talking about here, how about you show some compassion?

 

And WE shouldn't be putting our own onus on anything. There aren't being examined on their ability to plan ahead in case the laptop crashes on them. They have enough in their heads without IT deciding not to put in a system to help them because "they need to take responsibility"

Edited February 2, 2022 by Zammo

[RLR]

Does this not take the onus off the student to be responsible and save their work though? As they go into adult life, no-one is going to do their work for them. Never quite understand this. Is not saving the work the same as scribbling over the exam paper?

 

It does but exams are stressful enough for both the students and us staff setting them up so I like to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible. We've had students in the past not save even when we've told them to. I've tried more manual approach in the past and it just caused more stress due to people not reading instructions. The setup I currently have going is very autonomous and means less call outs.

[CHiLL]

Our invigilators are pretty IT illiterate, but our exams officer is better. She provides instructions on each desk, which details how to log on and launch the software (which isn't necessary, since we use specific exam accounts and Impero to auto-start the exam software). So if the pupil is struggling, the invigilator can just follow the steps on the sheet, even if they aren't good with computers themselves.

 

ExamWritePad is extremely straight-forward too. We run it from a share, so I only need to modify one config file or update it in one place, should I need to push an update. It saves the document into each exam accounts documents, so no-one else can access it and I specify via an AD security group who can/cannot have access to the spell check feature.

 

Other than ExamWritePad, the only other computer software students use for exams is Pearson's (whether it's Test Player for the real exam, or Sample Player for the mocks). Sample Player is straight forward - run the package file and off it goes. Test Player requires us to configure the machines to connect to the invigilator's machine, but that doesn't take long. Our exam's officer also provides instructions for the invigilators to use Invigilator dashboard, from logging in, downloading the exam, listing the user's and starting/stopping the exam.