Exam day setup

[ITWombat]

Well exam time will soon be with us.

 

What provision do folks here provide for pratical part of GCSE and A-Level ICT/Computer Studies.

 

Do you have networked or standalone stations? What kind of seating arrangements do you have? What printing setup do use.

 

The usaual pratice where I am is to have networked stations to give us flexibility in seating and printing. For security the stations run in a dracionian kiosk mode. No MySpace on exam day

 

As well the summer examniations do you have to provide for other testing on rollig basis during the year: C&G, CLAIT, EDCL etc?

[Ric_]

I have no experience with practical IT exams but I would say that you should probably ensure that Internet and email access is removed for the session so that cheating can be reduced to a minimum.

[Norphy]

I've just had to set up a policy for the 6th form ICT students for an EDEXCEL exam they're having. They had to have access to a certain amount of files, have no access to the internet or email, had to have access to a printer and to be able to save their files in an area where no other student has access to.

 

I created a script which redirects their home drives to another place (and another one which changes it back after they're finished) and I created a software restriction policy to allow them to only run Word and Excel, the only software they need for the exam. I also prevented them from being able to access local drives on the PC.

 

The idea is to run the script to redirect their homedrives on exam day and to enable the GPO link.

[john]

The way I do it for IT use in exams, note this is not IT exams, but general IT useage in exams for students with extra time, exam board permission etc for them to use a computer is the following:

Laptops with plain XP Pro, limited user account and Wordpad. You cannot use word etc as you are not allowed a spell checker but you need to be able to formt text, underline it etc.... so word pad is your friend. Little Samsung / Epson / HP Laserjet - the elchepo £50 ones or A N Other spare little laser printer, this solves all the problems for them so they can print etc.

 

If I have more than 2 I use an IT suite, network them together on a P2P setup and a printer on a print server, that solves it all.

 

XP Is crippled, everything removed etc so its just Wordpad only and thats your lot basically, works well. If I have a few I swap hard drives in and out of PCs to do that so its not constant reformatting / pulling rooms out of use etc....

[plexer]

I setup user names for them that are their candidate number. I then use a scipt to copy the exam files to their home folders. They are internet disabled accounts as well.

 

Other than that they use normal ict suites and networked printers.

 

Worked fine for the last 2 years.

 

Ben

[danIT]

we setup a number of new accounts i.e.

exam1, exam2, etc all exams files are copied to these folders

 

They are handed out to students at the beginning of the exam and they log on and are asked to change the password at log on. Typically students are sat about a metre and half away from each other, we thought about screens and booths but it really doesnt seem nessercary.

 

I beleive there are a set number of printers per person, 1 printer for every 10 pupils?? not sure if this is correct number.

 

We also help invidulate for the first hour to iron out any technical problems.

 

Internet restricted, to be honest thats all we do.

 

After all who needs internet when you can use the help inside all the microsoft products anyway!