Ans

Ans is the university's assessment software. With assistance from ECOLe, you can easily set up digital exams.

What is Ans?

Ans is the digital assessment software of the university. It can be used to host summative and formative tests. Ans offers a user-friendly interface for both students and teachers.

You can choose to easily create individual exams as well as build a collection of questions in your own question bank which you can use to construct tests each year.

Advantages of digital assessment in Ans

Digital assessment with Ans can offer various advantages, such as:

Automation of the grading process. Closed questions are automatically graded and grading open questions can be easily distributed among colleagues. Online correction work can be done simultaneously and anonymously;
Deciphering handwriting is no longer a time-consuming problem. Students can also better structure their answers with the text editor in open-ended questions;
Ans offers a wide range of question types. These include the option to add video and audio fragments (except at the University Sports Centre/Spui);
Detailed analyses on the quality of your exam as a whole, and of the individual questions;
The possibilityto build a database of both questions and entire exams, which are easily reusable and where quality control can ensure constant improvement of your exams each year.
Your exam can be taken with security software Schoolyear, preventing students from exiting their exam, whilst allowing access to any whitelisted websites you choose.

Security in Ans (Schoolyear)

Schoolyear is the integrated security software in Ans. Schoolyear is a software application that temporarily locks the student's device to prevent access to external documents, websites, and applications during the exam. It also prevents students from making use of any external websites while taking the exam. They can still access any external website if you choose to whitelist access to specific pages. More information on the student experience of Schoolyear can be found here.

Organising a digital exam

Do you wish to host a digital exam (with Ans)? All information on exam locations, the request, the assessment process, and the available support can be found here.

Access to Ans

All employees at the Faculty of Humanities have access to Ans through their ULCN-account. Log in via: https://ans.app.

Ans consists of two major interface parts:

Question banks: your place to build a collection of questions to reuse;
Courses: Here, you prepare tests, offer them to students, and do your correction work. Courses are created with a link to uSis each year. For courses that use digital assessment, the teachers involved are automatically granted access each year.

Please note: you will get access to your designated environments once the mgiration is complete.
Do you not have access to the correct question bank(s) and/or courses, or would you like to request a new question bank? Please contact ecole@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

Instruction module: Digital Assessment with Ans

The Ans Instruction Module for our faculty includes all the steps in the digital assessment process: From instructions on preparing questions to doing correction work and analysing your tests. Use the instructions as you familiarise yourself with Ans. ECOLe is always available for questions during office hours.

Ans Instruction Module

This module contains all practical information on Ans and ECOLe's support for you during the assessment process.

Go to the module

Formative assessment in Ans

Ans also allows you to host formative assignments. Formative tests are interim tests used to let students practice with course material.

For this, you can use an Ans question bank: A place to create a collection of questions. The collection can then be used to generate your tests and have students practice (multiple times) with different sets of questions. Tests can be put up during a select timeframe or for the entirety of a semester.

Embedding on Brightspace

Formative tests are set up in Ans and then embedded on Brightspace. This way, grades are automatically transmitted to your Brightspace gradebook. Assign a weighting through the grade center to have the grades be included or excluded from the student's final grade.
All students that are signed up for the course will have access to the tests. If they are allowed to take a test multiple times to practice, Ans only transfers the highest grade obtained to Brightspace. All grades will still be available to consult in Ans.

Instructions for embedding Ans tests on Brightspace can be found here.

Reuse

Formative tests are easily reused in your new Brightspace course each year. Read more here:

Reusing formative Ans assignments

Each academic year, new courses are created through a link with uSis. To continue using your formative tests, ECOLe copies them to your new course. We do this for all Ans tests that are available on Brightspace.

Course copy

Each year, you will receive an email from our Brightspace team to request your course copy. To reuse formative tests, you must indicate that you wish to copy the links to the new course. These will then automatically be updated with the new link by ECOLe before the start of the new semester.

Time slots

In addition to making the link(s) visible in Brightspace, it is necessary to create a time slot in Ans. Otherwise, students will not be able to access the test. Prior to each semester, we will ask you to inform us of the time slots. Upon request, we will make sure the tests get the assigned time slots in Ans.

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