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Exam.net transformed Teaching and Learning at Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium

About Örnsköldsvik Gymnasium

Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium is a large high school in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik in the north of Sweden. Kristina Renlund and Magnus Wallberg are two teachers who have been working at the school for many years, both of whom became Exam.net users more than five years ago for very different reasons.

Challenges

Kristina is a language teacher and back in 2017 she was looking for an online teaching tool where her students could write, adjust and revise written texts without the inconvenience of working by hand and to mark their work more easily.

“Previously, marking students’ handwritten texts was like trying to read rune stones!”

Kristina Renlund, English and Spanish teacher,
Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium

Magnus sat in the adjoining office and being a Mathematics teacher, was looking for a digital assessment tool with built-in access to a calculator and Geogebra so that Mathematics exams could be run without the need for extra devices on the students’ desks. In addition, both Kristina and Magnus required the digital tool to be reliable and secure, preventing student access to the internet during an assessment and so remove the opportunity to cheat or collude with others. They needed to feel confident that they could use this tool even for high stakes examinations.

The flexibility of being able to reconsider, rearrange and rework their texts in a user-friendly digital test environment led to much improved student confidence and performance.

Solutions

After some research and sharing of ideas, the solution for both of them was found in Exam.net. In those early days both Magnus and Kristina quickly became confident users and shared their experiences with each other and with colleagues. Word spread in the staffroom, of course, and from just two innovative teachers the number of colleagues using Exam.net increased continuously as teachers realised how versatile, reliable and secure it was; as well as being very easy to use. In fact, through their positive experience with Exam.net, the teachers became the driving force in bringing about change for all schools in the entire district. The school district had tried two online assessment tools in the past, but the teachers were not impressed. When there was a possibility to replace the test platform, the teachers put forward a case for adopting Exam.net instead. After presenting winning arguments, the local authority agreed and the schools in the whole district are still using Exam.net today.

“An online assessment platform needs to be so intuitive that everyone - all teachers and all students - can use it… Exam.net lives up to that.”

Magnus Wallberg, Mathematics teacher,
Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium

The vast majority of teachers could learn to use Exam.net without help and the technology gained their trust, leading to increased confidence whilst proctoring online assessments.

Benefits

Students gained confidence in their writing

For Kristina the benefits of marking digital as opposed to handwritten texts were clear from the beginning – so much time was saved during the marking and grading process. It became far easier for a teacher to decipher tricky handwriting and write comments on a digital text. Writing texts in Exam.net also had an unexpected and very positive effect on the students. The flexibility of being able to reconsider, rearrange and rework their texts in a user-friendly digital test environment led to much improved student confidence and performance.

“I can get the most out of my students when they write a text digitally”

Kristina Renlund, English and Spanish teacher,
Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium

An improved proctoring experience that provides flexibility

Not only did Exam.net prove to be very intuitive to use, but also very reliable and secure during high-stakes examinations, especially when compared to previous online assessment platforms adopted in the schools. The vast majority of teachers could learn to use Exam.net without help and the technology gained their trust, leading to increased confidence whilst proctoring online assessments.

Teachers and students alike particularly appreciate the chat function in the Exam.net test window which enables communication between teacher and students without disturbing the other students. For Magnus, the versatility of this proved particularly useful when he was called away suddenly just before a high-stakes examination was due to take place.

“Even when I couldn’t be in the exam room, a student suggested that I could still use the chat function. So I could still support my students whilst being a passenger in my car!”

Kristina Renlund, English and Spanish teacher,
Örnsköldsviks Gymnasium

Kristina also appreciates being able to see the students’ texts develop whilst proctoring, and therefore enabling her to spot and quietly prompt a student who might be having difficulty getting started on a writing task.

Going Forward

The use of Exam.net for classroom activities as well as high-stakes exams is now so widespread in the school that it has quite simply become part of the furniture. With the constant emergence of AI systems such as ChatGPT, it is now imperative to use a secure online assessment tool in order to uphold academic honesty. Fortunately, Exam.net has not shied away from the cat-and-mouse challenge of keeping ahead of these developments, and remains a secure and reliable online assessment tool, trusted by the teachers.

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