Exam Submission

Information and guidance on completing School of Mathematics examinations remotely

This page describes the remote take-home examination process in the School of Mathematics for the August 2022 examination diet and our advice to help you best demonstrate what you have learned in your courses. 

At the end of the page, you can see the Own Work Declaration, which you will be required to agree to before being able to access each of your examinations.  

These guidelines are up to date and replace any others previously released by the School of Mathematics.  

If you have exams from other Schools, please refer to the guidance issued by the other School too, as their arrangements may be different. 

If you have questions then please contact exams@maths.ed.ac.uk.       

Outline of the remote examination process  

1. The day before the examination a password-protected PDF of the paper will be available for download on the course Learn page. A notification will be sent when this is available. This is to allow those of you with unreliable internet connections to save a local copy of the paper and be prepared to start on time. 

2. At 12:55 BST (5 minutes before the scheduled start time), the password needed to open the PDF will be released in a Learn announcement and by email.  

3. At the same time, a non-password-protected PDF of the paper will be available to download from the course Learn page.  

4. After you have finished writing your solutions, you will assemble a single PDF file and submit it through Gradescope using the link on the course Learn page.        

Duration of examinations and submission deadlines  

Depending on the course, the duration of the examination will be either 2 or 3 hours. 

The time allowed for the corresponding take-home examination will be extended as follows: 

• All students will have an extra 1 hour to assemble and submit their PDF. 

• Students with extra time (according to their Schedule of Adjustments) will have a fixed additional 1 hour for the take-home examination. If you have any concerns regarding your Schedule of Adjustments please contact the disability service disability.service@ed.ac.uk in good time before the exam to discuss what support can be provided.   

• Note that just as in an in-person exam it is not possible to ‘stop the clock’ during the examination.  

• It is your responsibility to make every reasonable effort to submit your work before the submission deadline. 

• If you are having problems making your submission, you must email exams@maths.ed.ac.uk. If you begin to have an issue it is better to contact this address earlier than later since it takes time to respond and to help you. 

• The 1-hour submission window provided is to give you sufficient time to complete the required steps to submit your exam, including any scanning and upload of documents or solutions, and to have time to resolve any technical issues you might encounter during upload. We strongly encourage you to use the additional hour provided for this purpose. While you will not be penalised for continuing to work on your exam during this time, all of your work must be fully submitted by the end of the additional 1-hour submission window, and no further extension of time will be permitted if you do not submit by the deadline. The 1-hour submission window may sound like a long time, however, please remember that upload speeds can be quite slow. We have experienced a number of students frustrated in past exams because they have tried to submit close to the deadline and have then submitted late. You will find late exam submission information on our Exam Submission FAQs web page 

Practical instructions  

Writing and submitting your work  

It is your responsibility to make sure you submit a clear copy of your work as a single PDF.  

Please read these detailed instructions: 

Preparing and submitting your PDF (339.85 KB PDF)

If you have a query during the exam 

Please email exams@maths.ed.ac.uk stating which exam you are taking, and your query in detail. This mailbox will be monitored during exams, and queries received in the first hour will be passed on to the relevant lecturer.  

In the rare event that we need to make an announcement to the whole class, this will be done through a Learn Announcement, copied by email.  

If you have a problem uploading your work to Gradescope via Learn 

Here is a link to a backup submission form.This link will also be available on the course Learn page.  

Please only use the backup submission form if you have not been able to successfully submit in Gradescope. You should receive a submission receipt email to confirm a successful submission.  

We will check Gradescope submissions first, and we will only look at a backup submission if you did not submit work in Gradescope within the deadline. 

Rules and Own Work Declaration  

You will be required to agree to the following rules and declaration before you are able to take each exam remotely:  

Remote Examination Rules and Own Work Declaration (210.56 KB PDF)

Academic Misconduct

We remind you of the importance of academic integrity in order for you to succeed in your studies. Academic integrity is important because it guarantees a quality learning experience in which your own knowledge, skills and work is assessed fairly.  

There has been some confusion about what constitutes acceptable practice in the context of open book online exams. Un-invigilated, online exams increase the risk of crossing the line into academic misconduct. There are three common situations that we would like to draw your attention to. We very strongly recommend that you think about these very carefully when you revise and when answering exam questions.

1. USE OF SHARED NOTES AND COLLUSION We strongly encourage you to study together and help each other to learn. However, you need to be careful when preparing revision material together: relying heavily on shared notes and past paper answers, can look like you have been colluding (working together) during the exam. Your answers to exam questions must reflect your own independent understanding. Please be aware that discussing your exam answers with other students either in person or online (for example via messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat, QQ etc.), sharing the paper, or allowing any other person to see your exam answers is collusion and academic misconduct. Sharing any papers externally through question and answer websites is also academic misconduct. You must not do any of these things while other students are working on the exam, even if you have already submitted your own paper.  

2. USE OF TRANSLATION SOFTWARE AND OTHER FORMS OF ARITIFICAL INTELLIGENCE Your answers to exam questions must be in your own words, expressing your own independent understanding. This means that you should not write an answer in another language, then run that answer through an internet translator to obtain an English answer. Doing so means that the answer is not in your own words, and is therefore a violation of University regulations. You should also be aware that most translation software retains a database of previous translations, upon which it bases subsequent translations. This means that if several people on the same course use the same software for the same answer, the answers will be very similar, and are often identified by Turnitin as plagiarism.   

3. IMPROPER USE OF WEB RESOURCES You are advised to exercise caution when accessing materials during online examinations, and ensure that any sources you do use are referenced appropriately. Simply googling questions and using the search result in your answer is not writing in your own words. Remember that the internet would not be available to you in an in-person exam, and you should only use references as you would in a typical in-person exam   We particularly want to highlight guidance around Contract Cheating, which prohibits students from commissioning work from third parties and submitting it as their own. This includes essay mills and ghost writers as well as third-party question and answer sites or web forums, such as stack exchange or chegg.com, which are not legitimate resources. If you encounter the same question as that posed in the exam paper online, you should assume that the source is not legitimate. The use of such sites during the exam is academic misconduct and will be dealt with accordingly.   We recommend that before the exams, you read the University’s academic misconduct procedures and the examples and advice here: What is Academic Misconduct? This includes information about plagiarism, collusion, falsification, cheating, deceit and personation.   There are many support systems that you can take advantage of if you are feeling under pressure, and we encourage you to contact your Personal Tutor or Student Support Team if you are struggling during the examination period, for advice on Extensions and Special Circumstances, and additional support.