University of Groningen

The learning environment from the university is rated one of the highest in the Netherlands’ national student survey. That’s how we know this works.

Allard Naber, coordinator support and development of educational applications, University of Groningen 

Challenge

To enable digital exams in the LMS and collate information in a student portal 

The University of Groningen recognised that teaching had changed significantly since they adopted Blackboard over 20 years ago. With cross-faculty and interdisciplinary teaching, more group assignments and a greater variety of assessments, the university required a robust LMS that would support its teaching and learning goals.  

It selected Brightspace on the strength of its usability, levels of support, and functionality including digital assessments. It also rated D2L’s approach to future development and how it partners with customers. 

As far back as 2011 the university had researched digital exams, and these formed an important part of the university’s educational technology roadmap. Inge Pot, junior coordinator of educational applications, outlines why: “For students, it’s a lot easier to type and go back if they need to make a small change. For teachers, it’s easier to read than handwriting, and for marking it’s very easy to work together. Before, if you had several teachers for a course, you had to give the papers to your colleagues to mark their part, with digital exams they can do it at the same time.”  

Fast forward to 2021, the university set out to manage digital exams, not within a separate system, but within their learning management system (LMS). However, when the team began the transition to Brightspace, it knew it needed to overcome certain challenges. 

These included the need for students to track their progress through an exam, by seeing the structure upfront, and knowing how many points are awarded to each section so they can plan and manage their time accordingly. Technically, the team also needed to block access to course materials during exams, so students wouldn’t be able to look for answers. These insights were the result of numerous surveys and focus groups held with students.  

However, the challenges didn’t stop there. In addition to digital exams, the team also vowed to provide a student portal as a single resource for news, information and job opportunities. The university already had two portals, one in its legacy LMS, but it wanted to collate the information into a single, user-friendly space to give students clear and easy access to what they need.  

Solution

 Technology innovation, user consultation and peer learning  

The University of Groningen delivered digital exams through Brightspace using the platform’s in-built quizzes tool. The proof of concept for this innovative approach was developed in just a weekend, improved and refined over time and implemented in three-to-four months.  

The team took an inventive approach to block access to course materials, taking learning from a university in Belgium to add user roles with no access to courses. These profiles automatically route students to their exams, which run in Brightspace.  

To provide an overview upfront in the exam, the team, with the help of Brightspace’s New Learner Experience, created a way to retrieve information and present it clearly to students. A minimal header and clean interface ensure distractions are kept to a minimum to help students focus. Once the exam is finished, students are simply re-enrolled in their courses with usual access privileges restored.   

The team then turned their attention to the single-student portal and interviewed students to understand what they wanted to see. To deliver it, they tailored a Brightspace homepage, adding widgets and relevant links. Now the portal meets students’ need for a single source of information, where they can find everything relevant to student life including learning, accommodation, news, and jobs.  

The strength of Brightspace’s functionality is that it supports the structure we were looking for and is extensible.  

Allard Naber, coordinator support and development of educational applications, University of Groningen 

Results 

Thousands of students sit digital exams and benefit from a student portal  

The University of Groningen developed its own approach to delivering digital exams for students in the familiar environment of the Brightspace LMS. The solution de-enrols and re-enrols 7– 800 students in a matter of seconds. Most exams at the University are now run this way; in 2023/24 this equated to over 3,000 digital exams with 190,000+ students.  

The simple user interface gives students an overview of the exam at the start so they can plan their approach and timings. Meanwhile, the innovative user profile solution blocks access to course materials to ensure exam integrity. 

The digital exams make marking easier for examiners, as they no longer have to decipher a range of handwriting. They can also share work with colleagues to mark their sections.  

The student portal has met the objective of providing a single source of student information and grades through a clear, easy-access area in Brightspace organised around three sections. “Today” provides course schedules and news, “study information” covers policies and other details, and “careers” advertises job openings and workshops.  

Throughout, the university has had all the support it needed from a network of dedicated D2L learning experts including an implementation team, technical account manager and customer success manager.  

Brightspace acted as a partner during the whole process. They understood what we were looking for. Our implementation team was very knowledgeable. The project lead and technical consultant put us in touch with other Brightspace customers, which was very useful. It feels very much like a partnership. 

Allard Naber, coordinator support and development of educational applications, University of Groningen 

The University of Groningen had a vision for digital exams through the LMS to provide an intuitive, hassle-free exam experience with process integrity. It also wanted to collate information held across two portals into a single information point for news, updates and job opportunities. It succeeded by innovating through technology, tapping into the capabilities of the LMS, consulting users, and drawing on its D2L support network and community of Brightspace users.  

Discover Brightspace for higher education, visit d2l.com/en-eu/solutions/higher-education.