Examination Scanning

 

Instructors and Teaching Assistants in the Faculty of Social Science (main campus) may bring their multiple choice examination sheets to the Social Science Network and Data Services (SSNDS) main office (SSC 1008) for scanning. This is a free service offered during regular office hours, providing 24 hour turn around* processing. This faculty based service is restricted to main campus Social Science courses. All others are directed to use the examination scanning services provided by ITS, located on the the first floor of the Support Services Building.

* Exams for classes of size 500 or more may take up to 48 hours.

After the exam sheets have been scanned, instructors are encouraged to use Scan Exam-II scoring software, available from our software download web site, to grade their exam. There are Scan Exam-II Help Notes also on this site for both the beginner and advanced user. Overall, the scoring software is straightforward to use and provides very useful feedback to the instructor regarding the performance of the students and the exam questions themselves.

Note:  Exam hard copies should be picked up promptly after you receive an email with the attached .dat file of the scanned student sheets.

Instructors who do not wish to grade their own multiple choice exams can have them scanned at ITS and pay to have them marked with ScanExam software.

Before Dropping Off Your Exam Sheets:

Please pre-count your sheets into crossed piles of 50. This is a simple accounting method to ensure that you pick up the same number of exam sheets that you  delivered to us.  In addition, keeping the exam sheets in the same piles of 50 makes it easier for you to find individual sheets and  match them to specific records at times when you need to check for errors during the ScanExam marking process.

Best Practices

TA's, professors, and students need to avoid any extra markings on the Scantron sheet, and only bubble in the answers, their student number, or the 9's for the Master Key, and complete the information requested above the lines. For example:

  • Be careful not to have signatures extend into bar codes when signing your name
  • No doodles or notes should be made on the Scantron sheet (students could be advised to bring a blank sheet of paper to the exam for doodling, if needed).
  • No stapling the corners, as this can also interfere with the bar codes and cause the Scantron machine to reject exams
  • Exam codes for multiple versions of the exam should be coded and bubbled in as 111, 222, 333, ....999. No other marks should be necessary.
  • If the professor or TA wishes students to note something else on the Scantron sheet, it should ONLY be written in the front top right hand corner.
  • Everyone should use pencil so that any marks that interfere with bar codes could be erased by the professor or TA before submitting for scanning.