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 December 2021 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. At 09:00 GMT on the day of the examination a password-protected PDF of the paper will be available for download on the course Learn page. 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 GMT (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 can 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 extra hour you have for assembling and uploading your PDF may sound like a long time but please remember that upload speeds can be quite slow on home internet connections so you should not rely on having the extra hour to work on the examination.        

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)