WJEC Secureassess

[manick]

Hi all,

 

Anybody else have problems running the exam this morning (Geology I believe), namely freezing on question 4?

 

Cheers

 

nick

[Bongo]

Ours are freezing on question 5! The exams officer is livid as we had a problem with our Year 10 mocks on the 10th where some failed on question 6 and the WJEC were rubbish at supporting that issue. We have resorted to paper to finish the exam.

 

Update: Just heard it's a national issue with the Geology exam, heads have GOT to roll!!

[manick]

yep, pretty poor! We resorted to paper for the 2nd half and the first half was submitted via the software (if it worked, haven't been down there). I thought that it was pretty poor that they get schools to set up the software on their servers rather than being through the net to their servers!

[Bongo]

Been running on-screen exams for a few years now all using different software (!) first time we've ever had a failure.

[t4ll1f3r]

Same here, two out of twelve machines wouldn't move on from Q4. Paused the exam, shut the machines down and moved them to two new machines and completed the exam fine.

 

All twelve users had problems with the graph plot Q adding an extra line. WJEC say the points are the answer and they will ignore the plots.

 

The biggest problem was the words into boxes questions which were resetting when you moved off the question and back on. Had to revert to paper for just these ones.

 

Not a good day, I felt for the kids. This was our first and only online exam. Shame they had to be guinea pigs.

 

More exams next year, I hope they iron out the glitches before then.

 

I don't think upgrading the software so close to the exam start was a great idea as our geology mocks seemed to go without a hitch.

 

T

[garethEds]

Well we have been running the BTL SecureAssess software for two years now - three ICT exams (another one on Friday), Applied BUsiness last week and GCSE Electronics and this year has been pretty smooth.

 

HOWEVER...

 

The software is PITA - especially on Windows XP. Installing it is a nightmare. If you send out the MSI with a property then it installs to the 'Documents and Settings' area. You can set an INSTALL path in when you install. I've asked them countless times to write an MST Creator for schools - guess they have not got around to it.

 

Our exams officer hates it. It doesn't update properly and this week we have had an error on some of our machines. Seems we now have to install Microsoft SQL Server Compact 3.5 SP2 - rubbish. It should work straight away.

 

This year our exam server didn't update properly. Who knows why - but they had to access the server to fix it. It took them so long we missed the trial exams period.

 

In addition when you request the return of a paper (or a pupil requests it) there is no way to print out the pupils answers so you have to screen shot everything. This is a pain where the pupil has filled in double the box space as it means two screenshots.

 

We send a list every year to the WJEC/BTL of suggested improvements. Finally - try getting the WJEC on the phone during the exam time if there is a problem? Ring ring? ring ring, ring ring.

 

Gareth

Edited May 20, 2011 by garethedmondson

[adamf]

We were due to use this for our Geology exam today but due to issues getting the software upgraded and trying to get hold of the right person at BTL who could fix it we decided a couple of weeks ago to go with the paper based exam, thankfully, judging by some of the posts above.

[ricki]

Geology exam froze up here for some users and exams officer not a happy bunny.

 

Richard