Examity Information for Faculty

Instructor Best Practices for Using Examity

  • Allow for one week of lead time for courses to be in place within Examity.
  • Follow exam set-up best practices (noted below) to ensure a successful testing experience.
  • Lengthen testing windows. If you have a testing window of one hour, we recommend adjusting this to anywhere from several days to one week.
  • Keep any additional rules or special instructions short.
  • Make sure a password is set on the exam.
    • In D2L, create a quiz; go to the Restrictions tab and enter a password in the Password field that is about halfway down the page.  
    • The password must only contain letters and numbers.
  • Set multiple attempts within the exam (two or more).
  • Create a practice exam.
    • Allow students 10 attempts on the practice exam.   Keep it very low stakes (perhaps a small amount of extra credit), but allow them to retake it multiple times. 
    • Tell students they are required to take the practice exam before they take the real exam.
    • Make sure there is a large window for taking the exam - 48 hours.   
  • Set expectations with test-takers about what will be asked of them during their exam sessions.
  • Consider where and when to build Examity into your courses. If you are uncertain, please reference the table below.

    When to use online proctoring:

    • Large-enrollment classes
    • Multiple-choice exams
    • High-stakes exams (midterms, finals)
    • Courses with a historically high incidence of academic misconduct

    When to skip online proctoring:

    • Low-stakes assignments (i.e., participation quizzes)
    • Open-book/open-note exams
    • Essay-based exams (consider Turnitin of SafeAssign as alternatives)

Remember to provide accommodations.

  • Students will provide faculty with a letter from the Disability Access Center indicating any approved accommodation.
  • You need only to add the accommodation for each approved student to D2L and give your student the additional required time.
  • Examity may flag students for going over the time limit, but it will continue to proctor them, and you can ignore the flag.

Additional Tips

  • Utilize question banks for multiple-choice tests that randomize questions for each exam. Write your own questions so they cannot easily be found through an internet search.
  • Deliver questions one at a time (rather than all on one page).
  • Show correct answers only after the testing window has closed for all test-takers.
  • Keep exam durations at two hours or less. Long testing sessions have higher risk of network interruptions.
  • Students cannot take the exam at the last minute.  Ex. If they have a 1 hour window and Examity says the exam is over at 11pm, students can’t access the exam after 10pm.

Instructor Guides

If you have any questions, please contact the Examity team at mtsu@examity.com for assistance.