This guide takes you through Inspera’s implementation process for the Inspera digital assessment ecosystem. The process in this guide describes how to implement and roll out standard 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 and a 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 assessment is conducted.

In addition, an Account Manager will follow the project with commercial responsibility and follow up on any contractual changes.

_{After the contract is signed, your organisation is handed over to the Onboarding team for the implementation of Inspera.}

Before the first digital assessment is conducted, you will be introduced to our Service Desk. Our Service Desk has a dedicated Support Team to answer questions your admin and help-desk staff may have, and assist with technical troubleshooting. The Service Desk can be reached by a ticketing system, phone, and email.

Once the onboarding/implementation has been successfully completed, your Account Manager will take over the project fully and make sure that digital assessment with Inspera continues to be fully supported for your organisation.

 

Onboarding and implementation

Inspera appoints a dedicated Onboarding Consultant who will be the domain expert on implementing Inspera Assessment for standard projects.

The Onboarding Consultant is responsible for ensuring that implementation of the Inspera digital assessment ecosystem is successful, and that you as a new customer complete your first digital assessments.

Before commencing a project of this nature, your organisation and 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

 

We recommend commencing with a thorough project plan in place which outlines required activities, actions, milestones, and dependencies. Our Onboarding Consultant is always available to look at your project plan together with you and provide feedback if needed. 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.

If you have purchased the Enhanced Implementation package, your Onboarding consultant will offer to have a project plan workshop with you in advance of the Kick-off meeting. In this workshop the Onboarding Consultant will help you put together an implementation plan (project schedule) where you map project milestones, such as implementation activities, and set a start and due date for them.

 

Implementation activities

In order to ensure 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 integrations)
3. Identify users
4. Status meetings*
5. Adapt environment
6. Inspera Standard Training
7. Content creation
8. Mock assessment
9. Evaluate mock assessment
10. First live assessment
11. Evaluate Implementation

_{The Implementation process.The main onboarding and implementation activities are marked in light 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 your organisation) to get to know each other better. The meeting should cover these topics (depending on project scope):

• Project purpose or goals: Your goals for your assessment digitisation project, as well as how the success of the project will be evaluated
• Project structure and reporting: Stakeholders, roles, reporting to your 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 assessment platform implementation, training, mock assessment and project evaluation
• Digital assessment policy for faculties: Top-down requirement or voluntary bottom-up adoption.
• Current assessment processes: Overview of your organisation's current assessment processes, assessment types (open-book, closed-book, oral assessment, group assessment etc.), assessment periods, subjects covered, and assessment reporting needs. This should also include your assessment process such as:
  • Authoring
  • Test delivery
  • Invigilation
  • Grading/marking
• Support: Agreeing on your first-level support organisation for guiding and helping test-takers, academic staff, examiners, and invigilators
• Technical requirements such as authentication 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 at larger kick-off meetings could include: 

Customer	Inspera
Project team Management representatives  Project Manager IT services (for technical requirements) Assessment/Exam office	Onboarding Consultant Account Manager

 

2  System setup

The second activity in the implementation process is system setup which addresses these topics (depending on project scope):

• Account setup: Organisation name and tenant URL (e.g. organisation.inspera.com).
• Information architecture: Permissions for user roles and organisation units, and defining workflows
• Standard integrations*: Single Sign-On (SSO), Inspera open APIs, 3rd party plagiarism integration and LTI integration. 
• Other standardised services: Inspera Scan, Inspera Proctoring and Inspera Originality. See our Service Catalogue for more description and prices. 
• Customised options: Personalise your tenancy with background images and logo, and customise the it by selecting from a range of setup options. See Customisation within Inspera and Available configurations in Inspera Assessment (requires login) for more information.

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

Occasionally these items may already be covered in earlier steps, for example in the sale process or in the Kick-off meeting.

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 some time, and tips for using the relevant area or feature in the most efficient way without integrations.  Please see the article Implementation resources: Inspera Assessment without integrations for more information.

*Note: Integrations, except our standard LTI, plagiarism and SSO, need to be scoped and are dependent on software vendors to provide information needed. We strongly recommend scoping each integration separately and development set consecutively since integrations require the same resources from both vendors and customers during development and test time.

 

3  Identify users

Identifying users is not an activity in itself, but an nevertheless an important step in the implementation process. This step is owned by your organisation, 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 it offers. 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 on the responsibility to continually train new users in your organisation, such as:

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

Depending on the scope of your project, it is also essential to consider the functions of 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 System setup. The next step in the implementation process is the initial account configuration where you decide the settings of the system.

These configurations allow you to enable functions and options that are relevant for your organisation, and allow you to turn off unnecessary elements that are not in use and may clutter the interface.

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

*Note: If you have purchased the Enhanced Implementation package, you are entitled to the Inspera configuration meeting. This is a meeting to run through what specific configurations in Inspera might be required or useful for your organisation.

 

5  Status meetings*

*Note: Status meetings only apply to those who have this agreement in their contract.

 

Status meetings are an activity owned by you and your project team, and are a part of the project if the Enhanced Implementation package has been purchased. 

The status meetings will commence once the Kick-off meeting is completed. These meetings are a platform where you can discuss all matters related to  the project, including issues, project status, and even questions regarding the Inspera digital assessment ecosystem.

These meetings can be set up by your Onboarding Consultant if desired, but your organisation is responsible for setting up the agenda before the meeting.

_{Status meetings are set up regularly during the project period.} 

Unless otherwise agreed, the Enhanced Implementation package includes 7 x 30 minute status meetings. These meetings are scheduled fortnightly and should be set up at a recurring date and time. 

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

 

6  Inspera Standard Training

Training is carried out after the setup of Inspera Assessment, but can also be purchased 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 and the different possibilities it allows for. This group should be your first line of support for questions related to Inspera from the rest of the organisation, also during and after the onboarding phase. The group will also continue to have the responsibility of training new users in your organisation.

Our team delivers video and activity-based training (Onboarding Training Activities) on the different modules of Inspera Assessment (including Inspera Proctoring and Inspera Originality where applicable), which are followed up by either a Question and Answer (Q&A) session or four live training sessions.

Your contract will state whether you have a Q&A session or the four live training sessions. If you have purchased the Enhanced Implementation package, this consists of a pre-training meeting to discuss the training schedule, the content of the training programme, and specific workflows, as well as four training sessions of two hours each. If you have not purchased this, there will be one Q&A session with a duration of two hours . 

For more information about how our training is organised, see the article 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 purchase 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, or can be customised based on your organisation's needs. The content of these training sessions will be built on what is needed and potential areas for development for the project. 

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 and information about additional training, please see our Inspera Assessment Service Catalogue (requires login). 

 

6.2  Service Desk: Help and support After training , but before the first live assessment, you will be assigned to our Service Desk.  The Service Desk is Inspera’s Support Team who are dedicated to answering customers’ admin and help desk staff questions, and assisting with technical troubleshooting. The Service Desk can be reached by  ticketing system, phone, and email.

Your organisation's help desk staff as well as project manager(s) will get access to the Inspera Service Desk. This is where support requests, feature requests, service requests, and issue reporting are recorded and managed.

In addition to this, Inspera Support also maintains a Help Center resource to help our users learn about the features in Inspera 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 your current 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 that come with 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 work ahead of you and your organisation. The plan should answer question such as:

Which assessments needs to be created?	It is often stated in the project scope which assessments the project aims to cover. The list should also include the content for your mock assessments and Inspera demo tests.
Which resources do you need?	For the creation of question sets you are likely to need academics from different fields who are also part of the super-user team. The test creation is often a task for test-taker administration or the assessment/exam office. We also recommend setting up a process for quality assurance of the content.
How much time do you need to allocate?	The time required depends on the project scope and the type of assessments being created. Does the assessment contain rich design and complex question types, or does it only consist of multiple choice questions?
What is your time frame?	The time frame for content is dependent on the project plan, and when you plan to deliver the different assessments.

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

 

7.1  Creation of Questions and Question Sets

After having your training sessions, your organisation should be able to start on content creation. Before start, some guidelines should be agreed upon:

• The naming of questions and question sets
• The use of labels on questions
• The layout and options for question sets (e.g. sections, randomisation, etc.)
• The design setting of question sets (e.g. name display, navigation, etc.)

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

The question bank and the number of questions sets will grow over time. We have therefore created a Best practice guide for Inspera Assessment to give you tips on how to name questions and question sets.

 

7.2 Creation of Tests

We also recommend 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 assessment

After the training sessions, we strongly recommend that you conduct a mock assessment. The mock assessment is an opportunity to test the infrastructure compliance (network, power supply, hardware) and the organisation's and users’ readiness to go live with a digital assessment process. The mock assessment is particularly necessary for customers who wish to implement a digital assessment based on a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategy or using test-takers' own devices with a locked down browser. The mock assessment serves multiple purposes:

• Full test of end-to-end workflow, including planning, enrollment, assessment routines, Single Sign-On, test delivery, and invigilation, as well as marking and assessment data analysis
• Infrastructure compliance
• Evaluation of the instructions given to test-takers for downloading and installing the lock-down browser on their devices prior to the assessment session when BYOD is applied or a locked down is used

Information: As part of the implementation package, you will participate in a Preparation for Mock Assessment meeting to ensure your organisation knows what scenarios you want to test, who should be involved, and what the expected outcome is. You will also be added to the Inspera Service Desk and show how to submit tickets.

 

8.1  Evaluation of process for dealing with issues during the mock assessment

Below we have proposed some test cases which you could include in the mock assessment:

Trigger	Description
Log in	Forgotten username/password New test-taker (not registered) Distribution of SEB password for Safe Exam Browser (SEB) or Inspera Integrity Browser (IIB) Not installed the locked browser before the test start Old version of SEB or IIB
Loss of Internet	Informing test-taker(s) Allowing to change Wifi (if possible) Offline submission
Broken device	Change device (if possible) New login
Lockdown tests	Test-taker logged out of the locked browser (e.g. SEB or IIB) Closed device Power outage
Other	Inform test-takers about a situation Incident extra time1 Pause test-takers Resubmission2 Extra time1 1 Help Center: Add extra time to test-takers 2 See also Open for resubmission and submit on behalf of test-taker

 

9  Evaluation of mock assessment

The next activity after the mock assessment is to evaluate the results. These results should be presented to the project group. With the Enhanced Implementation package, a meeting will be conducted to share these results with the Onboarding Consultant.  The group will then be able to perform any adjustments in infrastructure, training, process engineering, or hardware before the first live assessment.

 

10  First live assessment

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

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

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

• 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 assessment on campus – do you have spare equipment ready?

 

11  Evaluate implementation and first live assessment

The last step is for your organisation to evaluate the implementation and the first live assessment. 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 indicators (KPIs) and focus points for evaluation should be planned by your organisation at the outset of the implementation process (project kick-off). These findings should also be shared in a meeting with your Onboarding Consultant. The purpose of the evaluation meeting is to ensure your organisation is prepared to continue using Inspera for live assessments.

 

Account Management

Once the implementation is completed and your Onboarding Consultant has finalised the implementation phase, your Account Manager will continue to provide support, consultancy, and advice on your Inspera use. This will be through the regular account management governance process as agreed between the parties.

Your Account Manager acts as your voice within Inspera, and Inspera’s voice to you. They are responsible for overall customer service and contractual delivery. Your Account Manager will help you achieve value for money from your Inspera licence by:

• • Demonstrating new or underutilised product features that support alignment between technology and pedagogy
  • Helping you to stay informed of developments to the product, and features on the Inspera Roadmap
  • Sharing best practices and fostering a community amongst similar Inspera users
  • Advising on digital assessment adoption and change management
  • Providing oversight and escalation for service delivery
  • Management of commercial matters