BTEC Coursework

[AndrewPowell]

Morning all,

 

EXAMs & BTEC's are causing headaches again.

 

We have traditionally had exam accounts for the exam team to use, locked down to use certain apps (word/exampad) and the exam team print the work after.

With BTEC 'controlled assessments', this seems to have become a nightmare. Students need to work on files, but can't have access outside certain times. Some of the team have suggested each student having a second 'exam' account, but that is adding a whole huge amount of work every year and just doesn't seem maintainable.

 

So... how are you doing it? I'm looking specifically at BTEC assessments.

[mavhc]

https://github.com/mavhc/powershell/blob/master/Create_Exam_Users.ps1

 

This will clone an OU tree and copy every user in it from the ExamTemplate user, prefixing each user with Exam-

 

Of course if you have 2 BTECs for 1 user, that won't help, in that case I'd have a script that changed permissions on their BTEC subfolder in their homedir or something

[ThomL]

For controlled conditions with a time requirement we have specific accounts used, one per student, the accounts are enabled each day they are require with PowerShell that is launched from task scheduler. The PowerShell enables the account when the task runs and sets an account expiration time just after the end of the session so the accounts are only active during they times students should be using them, making them unavailable outside of the specific session requirement.

 

Currently working one to one with teachers to manage this as I scale it up, at a previous school we had a shared calendar that the exams team would populate and we would then colour code calendar items to show it we (IT) had processed the item or if the exam team had just added the item or updated an item they would change the item colour so we would notice it. It quickly became a spot check at the beginning of the day for any yellow items in a particular calendar and then updating any relevant tasks. I made a crude PowerShell script with a GUI to create/delete the scheduled tasks.

 

It wasn't/isn't too much work once up and running, I plan to automate this further in the future.

[Aprice]

Second exam accounts for us.

 

We ask the teacher to provide a class list report, quick PowerShell script creates the accounts in a separate OU, job done.

 

If they want the accounts enabled / disabled then either logon hours or just manually enabling / disabling them.

 

Harder task is getting the kids to actually save the work, there's always one that just doesn't or never did any work in the first place as we've found too many times!

 

 

We have a Veeam job to backup the exam directory every hour. I also take a copy of the folders and send it to the staff via Sharepoint every now and then, so there's no excuse at the end of the coursework when nothings in their folder and the finger gets pointed at us.

Edited January 30, 2024 by Aprice