Best practices for the print & scan process in Ans

In order to create a written assignment, you must first navigate to the corresponding course. You can then click on New Assignment in the top right corner and select Written Assignment when prompted by the formulation page. You will be navigated to the written assignment window where you can add exercises from the question bank or create new exercises. Certain question types used in digital tests are not available for written assignments and vice versa. The overview of available question types can be found here. If you wish to add instructions or otherwise edit the cover page, this can be done by clicking the dropdown menu Customise layout, located at the top of the preview section. 

An overview of the steps can also be found here.

When it is time for students to take their written assignment, the assignments can be randomly distributed (unless the classes option is used). Students are then required to enter their student number on the cover page. This needs to be done in two ways. Students will need to write down their student number in the square boxes and also fill in their student number in the round numbered circles. The correct numbers must be crossed or fully coloured in the order of the student number. It is important that students fill in both options in case the scanning process encounters difficulties in recognising their student number. This number is necessary for Ans to automatically delegate the assignment to the corresponding student once the assignment has been completed and uploaded. A detailed overview on the cover page of a written assignment and how students should input their student number can be found in the following article: The cover page of a written assignment. Note: when classes are used and you generate an assignment for a class, the student number and name of the students are already written down on the cover page and thus the assignment cannot be distributed randomly.    

Ans has a unique QR code on each page of the assignment. Part of the scan processing tasks is to combine different pages of an assignment of a student. This task makes sure that all pages of the assignment are combined into one assignment and the result can be reviewed. In case the students' pages get mixed up in some way during the taking session or while scanning or uploading, the pages will be correctly filtered to the right student and formatted in the correct order to make the reviewing process that much quicker and easier.

In case a student makes a mistake during the taking session of the written assignment and the student requires a new page, it’s important to keep in mind that every page of a written assignment is unique. Whenever an extra page is given to the student and that page has a different QR code, this will cause errors when uploading the assignment back into Ans. An overview of the possible errors and the steps on how to fix these errors can be found in this article. Instead, we would advise to always include extra writing space at the end of the assignment by adding a question without content or points. Optionally an entire new assignment can be handed out to the student in which the student takes over all the answers from the other assignment.

In case a student wishes to change an answer that was given to a multiple choice question or multiple response question, this can be done by colouring the circle or square completely. These instructions can also be communicated to the students by adding multiple choice instructions to the cover page. More information about these instructions can be found here. 

After the taking session of the assignment has been completed by the students, you will then need to scan the pages and upload them into Ans. In order to scan the pages, make sure to first cut off all corners of the assignments containing staples. Make sure to not cut the four black squares on the pages as Ans needs this to centre the page and properly process your scans. At least three out of the four black squares on the page should always be visible. You can then place all of the written assignments in the auto document feeder. Note: it does not matter in which order you place the pages, as Ans will automatically assign the pages to the corresponding student, assignment and course. The recognition used to assign the pages is based on the unique QR code on each page and the student number associated with each student. Make sure the scans have a resolution of at least 300 dpi and are in .JPEG or .PDF format. Scans in .JPEG format need to be uploaded in a zip file. 

Before scanning

• Cut off all corners of assignments containing staples.

Scan requirements

• The scans should at least have a resolution of 300 dpi.
• The scans should be either in .PDF format or in .JPEG format. Scans in .JPEG format need to be uploaded in a zip file.
• The scans should contain at least 3 out of the 4 black squares.

Scan recommendations

• Scan in colour.
• Select the 'double input detection'-function on the scanner. This way, the scanner will not forget any pages by scanning two pages at the same time.
• Scan across the width of the assignment. This way the scanner is faster.
• Select the 'staple detection'-function on the scanner to detect any staples that have not yet been removed.
• We can recommend using a Canon imageFORMULA DR series scanner.
• To avoid potential timeout issues, we recommend limiting each zip file to 1,000 files or fewer. If you need to include more than 1,000 files, please split them into multiple zip files and upload them separately.

Once all assignments are scanned, you can start uploading the scans back into Ans. Navigate to your institution by clicking on the domain School name in the menu on the left and click the tab print Print & Scan. You can then click on the Upload file button in order to select the assignment you wish to upload. Ans will then begin processing the scans, which may take a few minutes. You can see a percentage corresponding to the progress of the processing on the right hand side. 

Once all the scans have been processed and the status bar is at 100%, you will see the corresponding assignment. If there are no scanning issues, you can click Review. If there are scanning issues, you can click on Resolve X issues. 

It may be the case that some errors are present in the upload of your scans. This could include an unknown student number or incomplete forms. Ans will notify you if this happens and allow you to resolve this issue. Upload errors can be solved by navigating to the assignment that has been uploaded and clicking on Resolve X issues. For an overview on how to resolve upload errors please click here.

The reviewing process for a written assignment is very similar to that of a digital test. Ans will automatically review all multiple choice questions and allow the reviewer to look over the students answers to an assignment in the content_paste_search Review tab. Open-ended questions need to be reviewed manually. A detailed explanation of the review process can be found here. If a multiple choice question cannot be detected, for example because no choice has been checked, multiple choices have been selected or the checked answer is too faint, Ans will mark the question as ‘Ungraded’. This way you can look over the answer yourself and grade it in accordance with the grading scheme as shown here.