This guide takes you through Inspera’s implementation process. The process in this guide describes how to implement and rollout simple projects without development phases. For more complex projects, the implementation phase involves bespoke development phases, whereas the simpler rollout process described below involves only standard configuration of Inspera Assessment, onboarding and training.

Implementing digital assessment is essentially about people, not technology, and the implementation should be seen as a business-critical change management process.

About our customer facing teams

Our Onboarding team will take over from the Sales department and help you implement the initial setup of Inspera Assessment until the first successfully delivered digital examination is conducted.

In addition, an Account Manager will follow the project to have the financial responsibility and to follow up on any contractual changes.

After the contract is signed, the customer is handed over to the Onboarding team for the implementation of Inspera Assessment.

Before the first digital examination is conducted, you will be introduced to our Service Desk. Our Service Desk has a dedicated Support Team to answer customer’s admin and help desk staff questions, and assist with technical troubleshooting. The Service Desk can be reached by web, phone, and email.

Once the onboarding has been successfully delivered, your Account Manager will take over the project fully and make sure that the adoption of digital examination continues to increase at the institution.

Onboarding and implementation

Inspera appoints an Onboarding Consultant, who will typically be both the Project Manager, as well as the domain expert on implementing Inspera Assessment for standard projects. Implementation projects that contain product development and integrations may have a dedicated Project Manager in addition to the Onboarding Consultant.

The Onboarding Consultant is responsible for ensuring that implementation of the Inspera Assessment service is successful, and that the new customer completes its first digital examination.

Before commencing a project of this nature, the organisation and the project team will need to make decisions and carry out different optional activities such as:

• Defining the scope and goals of the project
• Anchoring the project in the organisation
• Analysing the current assessment processes
• Selecting the different project teams

Before commencing, the project plan needs to be in place, with its activities, milestones, and dependencies. Our Onboarding Consultant always offers to have a look at your project plan together with you and give feedback. If the project plan has already been verified and published, it can be sent in advance of the first implementation activity: the Kick-off meeting.

Implementation activities

In order to have a successful implementation, Inspera has created a timeline of activities, that is based on many years of experience in implementation and contains the following activities:

1. Kick-off meeting
2. System setup (including Single Sign-On integration)
3. Identify users
4. Status meetings*
5. Adapt environment
6. Inspera Standard Training
7. Content creation
8. Mock exam
9. Evaluate Mock exam
10. First live exam
11. Evaluate Implementation

The life cycle of the implementation. Onboarding and implementation activities are marked in blue. 

1  Kick-off meeting

The first activity after contract signature, is a Project kick-off meeting, which is a meeting for both parties (Inspera and customer) to get to know each other better. The meeting should cover these topics (depending on project scope):

• Project purpose or goals: Customer’s goals for their exam digitisation project, as well as how the success of the project will be evaluated
• Project governance: Stakeholders, roles, reporting to customer management, and meeting frequency. If you haven’t already set up a team for this project, you can read more about this under How to Choose Your Team in the article Implementation resources: Project strategy
• Project schedule: High level planning and timelines for exam platform implementation, training, mock exam and project evaluation
• Digital examination policy for faculties: top down requirement or voluntary bottom-up adoption.
• Current exam processes: Overview of the institution’s current exam processes, exam types (open book, closed book, oral examinations, group exams etc.), exam periods, subjects covered, and exam reporting needs. This should also include your exam process such as:
• Authoring
• Test delivery
• Invigilation
• Grading/marking
• Support: Agreeing on customer’s 1. level support organisation for guiding and helping test takers, academic staff, examiners, and invigilators
• Technical requirements such as authentication and authorisation integration, data migration, testing system and infrastructure gap analysis 

For a smaller project, this would be a kick-off meeting between Inspera’s Onboarding Consultant and Account Manager, and the customer’s representative or project manager together with the Project Group.

For larger projects, the project kick-off should be a meeting involving all stakeholders in the implementation to secure alignment on all levels within the project team itself but especially anchoring with management. Participants to a larger kick-off meetings could include: 

2  System setup

The second activity in the implementation process is a System setup meeting which should cover these topics (depending on project scope):

• Account setup: Customer name and tenant URL (e.g. institution.inspera.com).
• Information architecture: Permissions for user roles and organisation units, and defining workflows
• Standard integrations*: Single Sign-On (SSO) and Inspera open APIs. For more information about Inspera Open APIs, see our APIs documentation
• Other standardised services: Plagiarism integration, LTI integration*, Inspera Scan, Inspera Exam Portal and Inspera Smarter Proctoring. See our Service Catalogue for more description and prices 
  Information: If you have other prices in your contract, those are the ones that apply
• Customised options: Personalise your tenant with background image and logo and customise the tenant by selecting between a range of setup options

To complete the system setup, the customer project team will have to provide information on the topics above.

For some customers this meeting may already be covered in earlier steps, for example in the sale process or in the Kick-off meeting.

The system setup meeting could also be supplemented with an IT-infrastructure meeting for on-site exams if the customer is thinking of setting up a computer clinic on-site. The IT-infrastructure meeting will consist of mapping necessary changes to the infrastructure and IT-infrastructure analysis. More information about IT-infrastructure, see the article Implementation resources: Preparations for first live exam.

If you are piloting Inspera, you are most likely trialing it as a stand-alone platform. Therefore, we have created some pointers for areas in which an integration might save you some time, and tips for using the relevant area or feature in the most efficient way without integrations. See Implementation resources: Inspera Assessment without integrations.

3  Identify users

Identifying users is not an activity in itself, but an important step in the implementation process. This step is owned by the customer, but the Onboarding Consultant can help and give guidance if required.

The users to be identified here are those you are planning to involve during the project and will over time establish a good knowledge of Inspera Assessment and the different possibilities within the tool. These users, also called super users, will also be trainers for the rest of the users in your organisation. This group of users should have participants that can take the responsibility to continually train new users in your organisation, such as:

• Staff working in different parts of the organisation
• Administration/Exam office
• Graders
• Invigilators
• IT department

Depending on the scope of your project, it is also essential to consider the functions like a project group, super user group, reference group and a steering group. 

More information about these functions can be found under How to Choose Your Team in the article Implementation resources: Project strategy. 

4  Adapt environment 

Configuration and system implementation is started by Inspera immediately after the System setup meeting. The next step in the implementation process is the initial account configuration where the customer decides the settings on the system.

Configurations are relevant for setting up an Inspera Assessment tenant where relevant functions and options are available. These configurations allow you to enable functions and options that are relevant for your organisation and allows you to turn off unnecessary elements that are not in use and may disturb the view.

To complete the initial configuration, the customer project team will have to provide information on the desired settings. This information gathering is conducted through email and/or in a status meeting*.  Your Onboarding Consultant will provide you with the full list of available configurations in Inspera Assessment. See also Available configurations in Inspera Assessment (requires login). 

5  Status meetings*

Status meetings are a customer owned activity and only a part of the project if the customers has purchased the enhanced implementation package. These meetings are held every second week during the onboarding process and are a platform where the customer can raise whatever concerns the project, such as issues, project status, and even questions regarding the system (Inspera Assessment).

Status meetings are set up regularly during the project period.

When the status meetings start and are set up depends on the needs of the project and the customer. This can be already in the initial phase of the project or, for example, after the training. The status meetings can be set up by Inspera’s Onboarding Consultant if desired, but the customer is responsible for setting up the agenda before the meeting. 

Once the implementation has been successfully delivered, often after the first live exam, the status meetings cease with the Onboarding Consultant and your Account Manager will take over the project. 

6  Inspera Standard Training

Training is carried out after the technical implementation of the system, but can also be ordered if needed at later stages.

Inspera uses the “train the trainer” concept where we help you establish a group of super users with good knowledge of Inspera Assessment and the different possibilities within the tool. This group should be your first line of support for questions related to Inspera Assessment from the rest of the organisation, also after the project. The group will also continue to have the responsibility to continue the training on new users in your organisation.

Our team delivers a video and activity-based training on the different modules of Inspera Assessment to be followed up by either Question and Answer (Q&A) session or four live training sessions.

Whether a customer is going to have a Q&A session or the four live training sessions is according to the agreement in the contract. If the customer has purchased the enhanced implementation package, it usually comes with four live training sessions, one for each module in the Inspera Assessment. For customers who have not purchased this, there will be a Q&A session. 

For more information about how our training is organised, see Inspera Standard Training. 

6.1  Additional training (at extra cost)

Additional training can be purchased at any time during the contract period. It is possible to buy multiple Question and Answer (Q&A) sessions and more advanced training sessions.

The advanced training will go through more challenging and advanced parts of the processes of delivering digital assessments and the use of Inspera Assessment or be customised based on the customer's needs. The content of these training sessions will be built on what is needed and potential discovered pain points for the project. The training sessions can be divided into four sessions, one for each module in Inspera Assessment.

The additional training can be done online or on-site. On-site training sessions can also be combined with either the mock test or the live assessment for further assistance on these activities.

For prices for additional training, please see our Service Catalogue (requires login). 

6.2  Service Desk: Help and support

After training and before the first live exam, you will be assigned to our Service Desk.  The Service Desk is Inspera’s Support Team which is dedicated to answer customer’s admin and help desk staff questions and assist with technical troubleshooting. The Service Desk can be reached by web, phone, and email.

Customer help desk staff as well as customer account managers will get access to the Inspera Service Desk, where support requests, feature requests, service requests, and issue reporting are recorded and managed.

In addition to this, Inspera Support also maintains Help and Support resources to help our users learn about the Inspera Assessment features and how to use them.

7  Content creation

Content creation in Inspera Assessment means the creation of questions, question sets, and tests. This is a customer activity where you should agree on some guidelines and/or make a content creation plan that covers the scope of the job before you start creating the actual content. 

When going from paper-based assessment delivery to digital assessment delivery, it is important to analyse today's assessment practices. It is easy to assume that things should remain as they are, but you may discover that it is preferable to change some practices in order to utilise all the new possibilities within different question types, design options, and delivery methods. How do you want to use Inspera Assessment?

Before you start creating content you should make a content creation plan that covers the scope of the job. The plan should answer question such as:

Our Help Center provides guides, articles, and tips that can be useful for exam preparations.

7.1  Creation of Questions and Question Sets

After having your training sessions, you and your team should be able to start on content creation. Before you start, you should agree on some guidelines:

• The naming of questions and question sets
• The use of labels on questions
• The use of settings and design

When you are making questions, also have in mind the possibility of reusing the questions. It is often easier to reuse questions if you make multiple questions instead of complex questions with multiple interactions/questions within.

Over time, the question bank and the question set bank will grow. We have therefore created an Inspera Best practice guide to give you tips on how to name questions and question sets.

7.2 Creation of Tests

It is also a good idea to agree on some guidelines when creating tests:

• The naming of tests
• Test-taker information
• Test-taker allocation
• Selection of test settings
• Design options
• Assessment settings

Inspera also offers quality assurance of test set up at an additional cost.

8  Mock exam

After the training sessions, we recommend that you conduct a mock exam. At the mock exam you test the infrastructure compliance (network, power supply, hardware) and the institution’s and the users’ readiness to go live with a digital exam process. The mock exam is particularly necessary for customers who wish to implement a digital exam based on a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy or using test-takers own devices with Inspera Exam Portal. The mock exam serves multiple purposes:

• Full test of end-to-end workflow, including planning, enrolment, exam day routines, Single Sign-On, test delivery, and invigilation, as well as marking and exam data analysis
• Infrastructure compliance
• Assess the instructions given to test-takers for downloading and installing the lock-down browser on their devices prior to the exam session when BYOD is applied or when Inspera Exam Portal is used

8.1  Invigilation points for mock exam

Below we have proposed some test cases which you could include in the mock exam.

9  Evaluation of mock exam

The next customer activity after the mock exam is to evaluate the results. These results should be presented to the project group. The group will then be able to perform any adjustments in infrastructure, training, process engineering or hardware before the first live exam.

10  First live exam

The second last activity of the implementation is to prepare for the first live exam.

In advance of the first exam it is important to prepare and inform test takers as a new assessment environment can be an extra source of stress for test-takers on their exam day. We therefore recommend that test-takers are prepared in good time prior to taking their assessments with Inspera Assessment. Please read Preparing and Informing test takers for tips on how to prepare test takers for their first live exam.

In addition to informing and preparing test-takers, there are also some questions that should be answered before the first live exam:

• Does the IT infrastructure meet the requirements?
• Has the relevant test(s) been created and activated?
• Have the invigilators been informed and trained?
• Are fall-back procedures and process descriptions in place?
• If you are having the exam on campus – do you have spare equipment ready?

11  Evaluate implementation

The last step is for the customer to evaluate the implementation. This is done before the project is transferred fully to the Account Manager.

Evaluation reports should be shaped according to the purposes of the proof-of-concept, pilot and full-scale digitisation. The key performance indicator (KPI) and focus points for evaluation should be planned by the customer at the outset of the implementation process (project kick-off).

Account Management

After the implementation is done the Account Manager will take over the project fully. At this point, the status meetings and other touch points with the Onboarding Consultant end, but the access to the Service Desk persists.

The Account Managers are the customer’s voice in the company and our company’s voice to the customers. They are also responsible for customer service and to drive customer adoption through:

• gathering of customer's feedback and communicating of needs back to Inspera’s different departments
• coaching customers on e-assessment best practices
• demonstrating the value of key customer features not utilised
• informing customers about new relevant products and features
• monitoring of customer exam KPIs and pro-actively engaging with customer if negative trends or anomalies are seen
• triaging of support cases and managing account escalations