E-Exams at the University Göttingen


As part of the “Göttingen Campus QPLUS – Quality Programme for Teaching and Learning” project at the university, supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, the service for Digital Learning and Teaching of Student and Academic Services (previously the Department for Academic Programme Development and Quality Management) is establishing a central e-examination service which will be available to all disciplines.

The concept, organisation and procedures of electronically-based examinations are in line with those of normal paper-based examinations. Therefore these are also examinations held on-site, which are compiled by the responsible university tutors and then carried out and supervised according to their standards and taken by the examinees with the help of electronic input devices. In many cases the examinations allow complete automatic analysis and furthermore have additional advantages over conventional examinations.

Nevertheless, introducing electronically-based examining poses a number of challenges for the tutors. Therefore besides providing the infrastructure (rooms, input devices, examination system) the role of the e-examination service includes advice as well as technical and organisational support of the tutors in every phase of the examination process.

In parallel to the electronically-based examinations (summative e-assessment) the service for Digital Learning and Teaching will in cooperation with tutors expand the range of tests and exercises which are used to review the progress of students over the duration of the course (formative e-assessment).

In addition the resources of the e-examination service are also available for the realisation of grading tests (e.g. for foreign language courses) (diagnostic e-assessment).