Monash Uni is planning to move exams to the cloud

Monash University has laid the groundwork to migrate half its exams from paper to online tests over the next five years.

The university currently delivers 280,000 paper-based exams to students annually.

But a lack of a digital repository for old exam questions, printing and courier costs, and issues with collection and redistribution, securing papers, marking, and manually copying results onto spreadsheets has prompted the university to consider a new approach.

It first conducted a trial of online exams across three summer semester units in early 2015, with the unnamed trial software used to compile questions, build the paper, monitor delivery, and mark the results.

The university has now this week issued a request for a proposal for a software-as-a-service system to handle exams, including question preparation, delivery, marking, reporting, records management and administrative security.

Monash is looking to have a proof-of-concept in place by February next year, before implementing the system in April.

According to tender documents, the new system will initially be used by “selected cohorts of students” before being progressively rolled out across courses, with an aim to have half of all exams handled electronically within five years.

Privacy and security are critical considerations; the university is insisting on single sign-on capability, identity access management, cyber attack prevention strategies, penetration tests, monitoring and disaster recovery tools as part of the package.

The move to digital exams is in the context of a broader multi-year strategy called Student First currently being implemented across the university by chief information officer Trevor Woods. It involves an acceleration of cloud-based digital solutions across the institution.

Over the past year, the university has started migrating paper-based processes to Google Forms, is streamlining administrative processes, and working to bring its $14 million annual software spend under control by implementing a central repository for all its software licensing contracts.

The Student First project will culminate in the implementation of a new student information system in 2019.