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The Two-Lane Approach

Generative AI has increased the speed and necessity of assessment redesign. With the two lane approach gaining in popularity as a framework to addressing a wicked problem, institutions need a modern digital infrastructure that supports their pedagogical approach to teaching, learning and assessment, in the way they want to, fitting to the framework. Inspera’s flexible capabilities easily support both lanes, opening up possibilities for academic staff that may not have otherwise been considered.

Lane 1: Secure & Supervised

Lane 1 assessments are secure, supervised and act to exactly what an individual student has learned. Operating mainly at strategic points across a program, these tasks focus strictly on the assessment of learning to ensure that students have met learning outcomes before they progress or graduate. Because they take place in a highly controlled, supervised environment, they allow institutions to form assured judgements of student ability. Generative AI is typically restricted or completely prohibited in Lane 1 to protect academic integrity, though it may be allowed under strict supervision if a specific professional skill requires it, such as during an interactive oral exam or a timed, in-class test.

Lane 2: Open & Unsecured

Lane 2 assessments are open, unsecured tasks designed to help students develop deep disciplinary knowledge and practical skills through the process of completing their coursework. Operating mostly at the individual unit level, these assessments focus on assessment for and as learning, focusing on process as much as product. Instead of restricting technology, these assessments scaffold the responsible use of external tools and resources, including generative AI, to help students brainstorm ideas, structure arguments, and reflect on their learning.

How we support Lane 2 / Open assessment →

The Requirement for Assurance of Learning

Assurance of learning is not monolithic. The needs of institutions, individual schools, faculties, programmes and even modules may differ. Institutions therefore need a flexible infrastructure with options rather than pre-ordained, rigid workflows that impinge on their ability to assess whether learning outcomes have been met within a secure environment.

Securing assessments presents a persistent challenge; physical space and resources are limited. While this can sometimes lead people to revert to previous and more traditional modes of exam delivery, Pen and paper exams in large halls are neither authentic nor logistically simple. Conversely, attempting to use technology to solve the problem in a piecemeal way by patching together several disparate tools to create security leaves institutions open to multiple points of vulnerability with the weakest point capable of undermining the very problem it purports to solve.

We understand that securing an assessment isn’t the same as providing assurance of learning. We see our role as providing you with the best technology to create secure tasks within an institutional framework that assures learning.

Flexible Security to Meet Your Needs

Inspera’s natively integrated assessment infrastructure enables faculties to create a secure environment while retaining the ability to deliver nuanced, discipline specific assessments. By integrating authoring, secure delivery, monitoring and flexible grading workflows, Inspera provides faculty with a simple yet effective way to deliver assessments digitally without compromising on the design and content of those assessments, while meeting institutional requirements for security and all within an environment that enables students to focus on the assessment task rather than the software being used to deliver it within an environment that is student friendly.

Pedagogical Depth Within
Secure Settings

Inspera Assessment provides extensive question authoring tools and item bank management. Question types with rich media that open up possibilities far beyond traditional essay and multiple choice, including coding, programming and numerical simulation can all be deployed from an item bank complete with validated metadata of your choice for future analysis.

Security wraps around assessment design. It doesn’t dictate it. Faculty need to be able to assess a range of learning outcomes inside a secure environment without that environment dictating the assessment. With Inspera you can have both security and flexibility.

Flexible Environmental Control

Inspera Integrity Browser (Inspera’s secure lock down browser) establishes a strict security perimeter around your assessment. Local files, the internet and generative AI remain beyond the reach of a candidate. Where required, specific resources and applications can be made available to candidates within this walled garden. This can include PDFs, videos and URLs, without providing wider access to the internet. Inspera Integrity Browser is our own in-house built software, not open source, making it safe from the kinds of attacks or circumvention that are possible with open source software. It is designed to work seamlessly with our assessment environment and undergoes constant, dynamic updates as our team constantly scans for any potential risks.

Secure is context specific. The commonality across institutions is preventing access to unauthorised material. But your infrastructure needs to cope with differing needs. Inspera allows you to customise the secure environment in which the walled garden is built to suit a range of institutional needs.

Proctoring to Suit Your Context

Where remote delivery is necessary or an option made available to students, Inspera Proctoring provides you with choice, because proctoring doesn’t and shouldn’t be the same for every student. From screen recording only, to live proctoring, coupled with identify verification and event flagging, we know that needs differ and configurability is key. With Inspera, you have a platform that can deliver a range of proctoring options from assessment to assessment, all natively integrated into the platform, removing the concerns of configuration and maintenance. Inspera Proctoring doesn’t make decisions for you; it provides insights that drive human decisions. The institution retains strict control over data, decision and deployment.

Geographic distance or offering student choice are no longer a barrier to academic integrity. Where suitable in your context, proctoring can expand the size of your exam hall, allow students to take exams from a more comfortable location and where appropriate, such as for distance learners, choose when they take their exams around their other commitments.

Quality Assured Grading Workflows

Grading Workflows within Inspera Assessment are a radical departure from other assessment platforms. Instead of having to find the best fit of pre-ordained flows, you can programme your existing flows into Inspera. Multiple rounds, multiple graders, multiple rules. Submissions take the right path through the right graders. Coming soon, Inspera Graide will bring classification AI feedback and grading to Inspera Assessment, enabling consistency and efficiency and much quicker ‘course corrections’ for students as feedback is delivered at the point of need and in time for immediate application. This enhances student agency, retention and outcomes.

Quality assurance with Grading Workflows means putting your policy into practice, simply and efficiently and without the need for multiple spreadsheets, emails, and risky manual checking. Inspera understands the work of grading and moderation, many of our colleagues are academics and we realise that effective marking and providing the rich feedback that your students deserve is a tiring and intensive task. We have designed grading workflows to work seamlessly alongside our rich feedback tools so that faculty can focus on the work of developing their students and not navigating a platform.

Offline Resilience so Students Can Focus on the Task at Hand

Inspera Assessment, Inspera Integrity Browser and Inspera Resilience Proctoring are all offline resilient, so students can concentrate on their assessment, not their internet connection. If their internet connection fails, the assessment keeps running with local backups that sync with the cloud when the internet reconnects. If it remains disconnected at the point of submission, there’s a secure, encrypted offline workflow to ensure all their work is securely captured and easily shared.

Secure assessment tasks are often time boxed and time sensitive. Giving students, faculty and the institution confidence that internet outages won’t interrupt assessments is crucial to reduce the administrative burden of running assessments. For support services it reduces high density, real time technical troubleshooting, turning a potential critical infrastructure vulnerability into a predictable, risk managed service.

 

Accessibility

Designed to conform with WCAG technical standards, the candidate interface natively supports keyboard-only navigation, screen reader compatibility, text-to-speech tools, and customisable visual contrast configurations. Inspera enables planners to apply extra time at the point of candidate setup or on the fly. Planners can also define individual start and end windows that override the standard cohort timeline.

Ensures strict alignment with legislation and public procurement standards without forcing faculty to resort to parallel, manual alternative arrangements. By embedding these sophisticated accessibility configurations directly into the core digital environment, the university eliminates the administrative fragmentation and high financial overhead of managing processes. This safeguards institutional reputational risk, reduces the burden on learning support services, and delivers a dignified, unified examination experience for every candidate. Secure assessments must be valid and that includes ensuring that all candidates are able to demonstrate their learning and without any security guardrails impacting on their performance.

To view our accessibility statement and read our VPATs, click here.

 

Secure Your Assessments

Protect the integrity of your degrees without compromising your pedagogical values.
Speak with our team to see how Inspera provides the stable, secure infrastructure your institution needs for Lane 1 assessments.

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Spotlight

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University of Auckland
Customer stories
University of Auckland

The University of Auckland (UoA) is New Zealand’s highest-ranked, largest, and pre-eminent research-led university, committed to delivering world-class education and assessment experiences for its students.

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Customer stories
Newcastle University

Newcastle University, founded in 1834, is a prestigious UK Russell Group institution with campuses in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Malaysia and Singapore. It's renowned for its strengths in health, data, creative arts, and sustainable solutions.

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Customer stories
University of London

The University of London is a federation of 17 higher education institutions with a global reach and one of the largest student bodies in the world. They are also one of the oldest universities in the UK.

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The Inspera Ecosystem

Inspera Assessment

Inspera Assessment is a secure, scalable, and reliable end-to-end assessment solution. Whether formative or summative, an exam or coursework, delivered open book or closed book, customers can choose the right configuration that works for them.

Explore Assessment

Inspera Integrity Browser

From strictly locked down exams where candidates have access to nothing but their exam paper, to assessments where you allow candidates access to selected permitted materials, Inspera Integrity Browser is purpose-built to create a secure, controlled environment that seamlessly integrates with all Inspera products.

Explore Integrity Browser

Inspera Proctoring

Inspera Proctoring expands the exam hall with flexible, scalable remote monitoring – live or recorded. It seamlessly supports camera, microphone, screen recording, and room scanning. Designed to work within Inspera Assessment or your LMS, Inspera Proctoring keeps you in control of integrity.

Explore Proctoring

Inspera Originality

Placing academic integrity where it belongs – with educators. Students refine their work with pre-checks, as educators gain clarity through cohort analysis. With seamless integration and advanced similarity checking across more than 30 languages, Originality goes beyond traditional tools.

Explore Originality

Inspera Graide

Inspera Graide uses classification, not generative AI, to streamline the grading process and generate tailored feedback for every student using the words written by your graders, not an LLM. Reduce marking time by 90% and apply your marker’s judgement consistently across every cohort.

Explore Graide

Inspera Assessment

Inspera Assessment is a secure, scalable, and reliable end-to-end assessment solution. Whether formative or summative, an exam or coursework, delivered open book or closed book, customers can choose the right configuration that works for them.

Explore Assessment

Inspera Integrity Browser

From strictly locked down exams where candidates have access to nothing but their exam paper, to assessments where you allow candidates access to selected permitted materials, Inspera Integrity Browser is purpose-built to create a secure, controlled environment that seamlessly integrates with all Inspera products.

Explore Integrity Browser

Inspera Proctoring

Inspera Proctoring expands the exam hall with flexible, scalable remote monitoring – live or recorded. It seamlessly supports camera, microphone, screen recording, and room scanning. Designed to work within Inspera Assessment or your LMS, Inspera Proctoring keeps you in control of integrity.

Explore Proctoring

Inspera Originality

Placing academic integrity where it belongs – with educators. Students refine their work with pre-checks, as educators gain clarity through cohort analysis. With seamless integration and advanced similarity checking across more than 30 languages, Originality goes beyond traditional tools.

Explore Originality

Inspera Graide

Inspera Graide uses classification, not generative AI, to streamline the grading process and generate tailored feedback for every student using the words written by your graders, not an LLM. Reduce marking time by 90% and apply your marker’s judgement consistently across every cohort.

Explore Graide

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Book a demo or talk to an expert today to see how your faculty will benefit. Our experts will guide you through tailored demos to address your unique needs.