Blackboard (Student): Taking Online Exams

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Before You Begin

Start your exam as soon as possible. If your instructor makes the exam available for 5 days, plan to take the exam early, rather than waiting until the last day. If you have an issue, you will have time to contact the Help Desk and / or your instructor.

NOTE: Taking exams on a phone or mobile device is not recommended!

For best results, use of a desktop or laptop computer is highly recommended, rather than using an iPad or other mobile device.

If possible, avoid using wireless connections, mobile hotspots or satellite Internet connections. They tend to be less reliable than wired connections and may cause problems due to the bandwidth intensive activity required for an exam. If you lose your Internet connection, you may be kicked out of the exam, be unable to save answers, move to other questions, submit or exit the exam. Don't refresh the page, close the window, try to navigate to other areas of the course or use the browser's back button while you are taking the exam

If available, take any practice exams and read all of the instructions provided by your instructor.

If you encounter problems during an exam, contact your instructor immediately.

Starting the Exam

Navigate to the area of the course where the exam link appears and click on the exam title
On the next page, click Begin
At the top of the exam, review the Test Information area (the arrow at the top will collapse or expand the section). This area displays the number of available attempts, timer status, and any optional instructions. It will also indicate if you must complete the exam in one sitting or if you can save / exit and continue work on the exam at a later time. If a timer is used, a status bar will keep you updated on the available time left. If Auto-Submit has been enabled as an exam setting, the exam will be submitted automatically once the timer expires

As you answer each question, it will be auto-saved - the status of the question will change from Save Answer to Saved next to a green checkmark. The Question Completion Status area also displays a saved icon for each question you have answered. You can click on a question number within that area to move directly to that question. The arrow next to the Status area can be used to collapse or expand the area
If a timer is enabled, it will count down the remaining time

Important: The timer will continue to run even if you save and exit the exam. For example, if you start an exam with a 20-minute time limit on Tuesday, work for 15 minutes, save, exit and then return to the exam on Thursday and submit it 3 minutes later, the timer will show that you took 48 hours to complete. When a timer is enabled, you will not be prevented from continuing past the expired limit unless the Auto-Submit option has also been enabled by your instructor. However, the total time is recorded and visible to your instructor who will make the final decision on scoring. Some instructors do deduct points for going over the time limits.

When all questions have been completed, check over the exam and click the Save and Submit button (or if Auto-Submit is enabled, the exam will submit automatically once time runs out)
A status page will appear, similar to the following, displaying the start / submission time and overall time used. Click OK to review the results from the exam. You may see your score immediately if all questions are auto-graded and depending on the type of feedback your instructor has selected to display. Essay questions and exams that have exceeded the time limit must be manually graded by your instructor before you can see the results/feedback. Refer to the separate Blackboard (Student): Using My Grades article for additional information about viewing instructor feedback

Multiple Attempts

If the exam is configured to allow more than one attempt, when you return to the exam link and start another submission, you can see how many attempts exist and how many you've used. Click the Start New Submission button to re-take the exam again.