FAQ 1- Can I continue to take exams in the traditional format?

Yes. You can publish the exam in pdf format on the UC page in Fenix, at the time of the exam and ask the students to send photos or a pdf (e.g. using CamScan App) of the solution by email or submit it in Fenix Projects.

Remember the students to send files with an average resolution and to confirm its readability. During the realization of the online test, students must be connected in Zoom with the teacher during the entire duration of the test. See Assessment Similar to Face-to-face section for more information.

FAQ 2 – How to prevent students from communicating with each other during the assessment and sharing information?

First of all, you can use Zoom during the assessment, recording the session (only with the permission of the students) and asking students to turn on the camera, see Planning section.

As suggested in section Assessment – Best Practices, it is important in this type of assessment to dimension well the duration, in order to discourage the exchange of information, under penalty of not having time to complete the exam. Finally, having different assessment versions also discourages the exchange of information, seeing the possibility of randomness in the available tools.

FAQ 3 – Is it necessary to perform a formative assessment before the assessment?

YES. It is essential that an example test is done so that students experience the platform in terms of access, how to answer questions, how to submit files, etc.

For more information see section Planning.

FAQ 4 – What if students complain that they were unable to submit the assessments or parts of it?

It is essential to ask students to take a photo in case of failure in the platform demonstrating the problem they are facing and send it during the exam. Complaints after the exam should not be accepted. See section Planning and Code of Honor.

Please note that the upload/download speed for the platforms is dependent on the Internet access speed of each user. Since mid-March2020, there have been many more problems of congestion and speed of Internet access for customers of the telecommunications operator NOS, than of other operators that already provide fibre-optic access in many locations in the country. Operators such as Vodafone or MEO have much more modern network infrastructures and with less access contention.
On the other hand, there are students who live in places where access to the Internet is still via telephone line (ADSL) connections, or through mobile phone networks of older generations.

In this sense, we also recommend that the content that is made available to students be optimized to reduce its size. This way, students will take less time to download it. For example, if the content contains images, the image files should preferably not exceed 200 ~ 300kB unless the size and resolution of the content to be displayed are relevant.
In this way, the final files produced, usually in Word (.docx) or PDF formats, will have smaller dimensions and the download time will be substantially less for a student with much slower Internet access.

FAQ 5 – How to proceed if the students have internet connection problems during an assessment?

If the student has technical problems during the assessment, he/she should contact the teacher as soon as possible (Zoom chat, email, mobile phone) identifying the situation, and send proof of the event (photo, image, etc.).

In situations where the students fail to connect in Zoom during the assessment, the teacher can later confirm the Zoom report and check the absence time. The relevance of this absence can be analyzed according to the total duration of the assessment.

For more information see section Planning and Code of Honor.

FAQ 6 – Is it possible to record the students’ assessment?

The recording of the students’ assessment (written or oral) cannot be made, according to the Guidelines on distance assessment in higher education establishments (in Portuguese) of the Portuguese Data Protection Authority which states in point 2: “… if unnecessary, or at least excessive, the recording of images and sound during the assessment (oral and, obviously, written), it is up to the responsible person to adopt the appropriate measures to prevent recording; this is justified to prevent reuse improper use of the recordings.”, it is understood that the responsible person for the treatment to be adopted is the responsible for the UC.

FAQ 7 – How do the proofreading take place?

The proofreading should be done in a Zoom session, using the Waiting Room functionality for students who are not currently reviewing their proof. See recommendations in Proofreading of Assessment.

FAQ 8 – How do I record my classes?

Recommendations for recording lessons and storing them are available in the section Recording of Classes section and have additional information on the Online lectures‘ website.

FAQ 9 – How do I activate my Google account?

The instructions for activating your Google Suite account are available on the DSI website. Then, to associate your UC with Google Classroom, follow the steps presented in the section on how to do it in the Google Classroom area.

FAQ 10 – How do proceed when fraud is verified in an assessment?

In case the teacher verifies fraud during an assessment, the procedure is similar to the one used in presential assessments, to cancel the assessment of the student(s) and report to the Pedagogical Council (cp@tecnico.ulisboa.pt) with the fraud-proof.