Exam announcement 

This semester’s exam will be offered online and onsite. The moodle course on information how to register for either online or onsite. The following is a guideline for the online exam. More on the onsite exam, see below. Every participant will write his or her exam at home and will be supervised via ZOOM.  Please read all of this document carefully and familiarize yourself with the requirements and process before the exam. It is your responsibility to follow the camera/ZOOM setup guidelines and to correctly submit your exam on time. 

The exam will be written on paper. Each student will get individualized and numbered blank sheets one week before the exam, which you print in the week leading up to the exam, use during the exam, and scan & upload to a TUMexam interface after the exam. During the exam, the questions will be given to you via PDF in Zoom and Moodle.  

There will be a mock exam in advance for every course. We strongly recommend to participate in the mock exam! Please check moodle for date/time!


Hardware requirements and setup 

Several hardware requirements are tied to this process: You will need… 

  • A main device (preferably laptop or computer) with stable internet connection that you will use to join ZOOM. 
  • A webcam connected to the main device (integrated or not), which is set up so that your face and hands can be seen during the exam. This is best achieved by placing the webcam a little to your side and/or far enough away.  
  • A microphone connected to the main device (integrated or not) that is kept open at all times.  
  • Speakers connected to the main device.  
  • A phone that you can use to inform us in the case of loss of internet connection or other technical issues. 
  • A scanner or scanner-app on a smartphone (for example smartphone camera) to take pictures or create a PDF of your exam. The PDF/pictures need to be uploaded, requiring connection of scanner/camera to the internet. 


Allowed materials: this is different for each of our exams

  • Optimal Control and Decision Making: Open-book, but paper only For the exam itself, you can use any additional material in paper-form, such as books, the printed script, handwritten notes, printed or handwritten summaries and formulas. The use of digital materials or additional devices is not allowed. If you want to use the notes you took digitally, you need to print them, one non-programmable pocket calculator is allowed.
  • Dynamische Systeme: Non-digital material (books, papers, etc.), one non-programmable pocket calculator allowed.
  • Computational Intelligence: One A4 sheet of hand-written or printed notes (2 sides), and one non-programmable pocket calculator allowed.
  • Regelungssysteme 2: open-book, but paper only, non-programmable calculator allowed. You can use any material in paper-form, such as books, the printed script and exercise sheets, handwritten notes, printed or handwritten summaries and formulas. The use of digital materials or additional devices except from a non-programmable calculator is not allowed. If you want to use the notes you took digitally, you need to print them. 
  • Einführung in die Roboterregelung: open-book, but paper only, non-programmable calculator allowed. You can use any material in paper-form, such as books, the printed script and exercise sheets, handwritten notes, printed or handwritten summaries and formulas. The use of digital materials or additional devices except from a non-programmable calculator is not allowed. If you want to use the notes you took digitally, you need to print them. 


To do before the exam 

  • Once made available in Moodle (approx. one week before the exam), print your individual exam sheets. Use A4 paper, both one- and two-sided printing are fine. You can also print the sheets at any copy shop. The sheets will be individualized with QR-Tags, meaning each student will have his or her own version of the sheets. Do not copy the sheets of others, this will mix up exams in the TUMexam database and we can no longer guarantee that your exam will be graded. 
  • Prepare and test the hardware and your setup, specifically set up your workplace and ensure that you can digitalize and upload your exam sheets with reasonable quality and in reasonable time. Details see below.   
  • Read and follow the ‘Instructions for solving and submitting remote exams’ here: https://tumexam.de/static/handreichung_submissions_students.pdf . 
  • If you haven’t already done it, register at https://tum-conf.zoom.com to setup your ZOOM account that is provided by TUM. Use your full name (same as in TUMonline). 

 

Set up your workplace  

  • Position webcam. Your webcam fulfils two roles: 
    • Before the exam, we will use it to check attendance.  You need to be able to show your student id and your face to the webcam. If you do not yet have a student ID, a passport is also ok.
    • During the exam, we will use it to supervise and ensure fairness of the exam. As the usage of a computer, notebook, smartphone or any other digital device is not allowed (outside of using ZOOM or accessing the exam questions pdf), you need to show your hands at all times. Try to position the camera such that we can also see (most of) your face at the same time. Please note that no virtual background is allowed.
    • We will take one screenshot during the ID check. This screenshot will only be used during the exam and deleted immediately afterwards. 
  • Ensure you will have a quiet environment and will be alone in the room during the time of the exam. 

 

Scanning 

  • You are responsible for providing readable, good quality scans! If your scans are not readable, the exam or the unreadable assignments will be graded with zero points! 
  • You need to either upload multiple images (jpg, png or in a zip) or one pdf of your exam. To achieve this, there are many good solutions. All of them require practice! Try out “your” solutions several times to make sure it works smoothly. Train for the entire workflow: preparing your setup (scanning surface, lighting, starting required apps), scanning (keep track of what is already scanned, make sure not to forget pages), to processing (eg. upload from mobile phone to computer)… 
     
  • Recommended scanner settings are: Color scan, 200 dpi 
  • Resulting PDFs must be in A4 size (Attention: US letter size will screw up in the system!) 
  • The maximum upload file size of TUMexam is 70 MB in total 
  • In general, when scanning  
    • Scan only one page at a time. Remove all other sheets from the view of the camera, place the sheet to be scanned on a clean surface. Do not stack exam sheets on top of each other, if a QR code of another page is visible in the scan, TUMexam will not detect it.  
    • Scan the entire page, do not scan only part of the page, do not zoom in on your answers, always include all 4 corners (with their QR codes). Also, minimize the view of other objects/part of tables making sure that the picture borders match the paper size as much as possible. 
    • Use good lighting  
  • There are three basic options:
    • Hardware flatbed scanner
      • Provides best results, avoids wiggly blurred pictures
      • independent of environment lighting
      • Scanning can be slow depending on the model
    • Scanner app on a mobile phone
      • It is recommended to make scanning tests with your preferred scanning app. Some apps tend to produce extremely large file sizes. To verify, scan 20 pages (A4 size) with text on them in color mode. The file size of the resulting pdf should stay well below 80 MB, a “normal” file size should be around 10 MB for 20 pages.
      • Do not use trial versions of the apps that place watermarks into the scans!
      • Hold your phone steady during scanning. Good lighting helps avoid wiggly, blurred pictures. 
      • Clean, uniformly colored background facilitates the page size auto-detection process of the app
    • Photos of the sheets taken with a mobile phone or camera
      • Turn off HDR mode (this will generate too large file sizes
      • Take care of good lighting, hold the camera steady to avoid wiggly, blurred pictures
      • Do not tilt your phone while scanning, hold it in parallel to the sheet.
      • Keeping the above requirement of including the full page in mind, make the page take up as much space of the picture as possible. 

 

A timeline of the exam 

  • 30 minutes before the exam, join the ZOOM session. Use your full name (same as in TUMonline). You will be moved into a separate room with up to 25 students total. Each room will have a designated supervisor from our team. 
  • In the 30 minutes leading up to the exam, the supervisor will check your webcam setup and possibly ask you to show your student ID in the webcam. The supervisor will also give you one or more phone numbers in the ZOOM chat, which you need to call in case of technical issues. Write down the phone number on a piece of paper, since you might lose access to the ZOOM chat if you experience technical issues. Use this time to also make sure yourself that your setup is working as intended and that you have no other digital devices within reach. Mute your phone. Have your printed exam sheets in front of you. Be ready to access the exam questions in Moodle or in ZOOM. 

 

  • Once the exam starts, the exam questions will be made available to you as PDF and you start answering the questions, by filling out your printed blank exam sheets. For fairness reasons (same conditions online as onsite, see below), it is not allowed to print the exam questions. Make sure you fill in the correct answering boxes. We cannot give points if you answer the wrong question. 
  • During the exam, everyone will be muted by the supervisor. If the supervisor suspects cheating, you might be asked to adjust your camera or position, have your microphone turned on, or be asked to share your screen. To avoid this, please cooperate with us and make sure your setup does not look unnecessarily suspicious, i.e. make sure that we can always see that you are working on the exam and not using a computer or smartphone: Show your hands at all times and show as much of your face as possible. 
  • If you experience technical issues that result in loss of ZOOM connection, loss of webcam, or loss of microphone/speakers, resolve the issue as soon as possible. If you think resolving the issue may take more than a minute, call your supervisor. There is no problem with the validity of your exam as long as you can resolve the issue within 5 minutes. After 5 minutes we have to assume communication with a third party and will report the incident to the examination board. By calling us, we can be assured that you are not communicating with anyone else. If technical issues persist for long, you will be given extra time after the exam. 

 

  • Once the exam is finished, we will ask everyone to stop writing. While staying in view of the camera (as much as possible, coordinating with the supervisor), you now scan/take pictures of your exam sheets and upload them using a link given to you before the exam. This process should take no longer than 20 minutes. Please finally check, if your upload is complete!

 



Onsite Exam

If your reasons to choose the onsite exam pertain to hardware or software problems, please note that the onsite exam requires a notebook or similar device, too. Participants in the onsite exam will also need to print out their blank sheets themselves, use them during the exam and look at questions on their digital device and scan their individual sheets after the exam. The difference to online is that you are not part of any ZOOM session. 

Please consider the regulation from TUM for onsite exams: https://www.tum.de/die-tum/aktuelles/coronavirus




If you have any question, please enter a comment here (you need to login first). If you experience technical problems when adding a comment, please ask your question in the moodle forum of your course (answers will then be shown here).


Manual for downloading and submitting an online exam


Questions & Answers:


Q: Is it allowed to print the exam questions after they have been published in moodle or in zoom.

A: No, for fairness reasons (same conditions online as onsite), it is not allowed to print the exam questions.


Q: Is it ok to use a second screen (in addition to the screen where zoom is running) to display the exam questions?

A: A 2nd screen or a second device is allowed for viewing the exam questions-pdf, but only if it can be verified at any time that there is no typing on the 2nd device and that no additional contents are visible. Be prepared to show us your second screen/device. 


Q: Does the supervisor need to see my screen via camera?

A: No, as long as it can be verified that there is no typing on the device.


Q: Is it allowed to answer the exam questions directly by annotating the pdf on a tablet or similar device (e.g. via notability).

A: No, any form of typing/writing on your digital device is prohibited.


Q: Is it possible to use an additional smartphone as "webcam"?

A: No.


Q: I cannot access the pdf of the exam questions in the zoom chat.

A: This is most probably, because you joined zoom in the web browser. Please in this case, download the exam questions in moodle.


Q: Do I need to write my name on the exam sheet?

A: No neither name nor matriculation number is written on the exam sheet.


Q: Is it possible to submit earlier?

A: No, unfortunately, it is technically not possible to submit earlier. 


Q: Is it possible to recharge my device in the onsite exam?

A: Unfortunately, plug sockets are not available in all lecture halls. Please inform yourself, how lecture halls are equipped.


Q: What happens, if my device runs out of charge during the onsite exam?

A: We will provide a printed copy of the exam questions for you.


Q: Why do also onsite participants need to bring their printed blank sheet and see question only on the screen?

A: First reason is fairness. We are directed to have online and onsite exam as similar as possible. Second reason are technical issues: It is more robust to process all exams in the same way. All other solutions would require manual assignment or checks that are prone to errors.


Q: Why do also onsite students need to scan their individual exam sheets? Why are they not collected?

A: This is to improve robustness of the process. We can double-check identity then (QR on exam sheet + account where exam was uploaded)


Q: If I do more than one exam at LSR/ITR, is it necessary to do also more than one mock exam?

A: No, all exams follow the same procedure. Just doing one mock exam is fine!




 

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