BPP LPC help. 3Days?

[Jane Smith]

I agree with h1 as the webcam will be on your face probably not looking over all the desk below really.

One of my twins just did his Inspera test of the system today including the test ID check and room scan. He said it was fairly simple. The software closed down all his other programmes that were open and running (which in the real exam people should close down before they start the exam). I noticed at the end you need to let the system upload your exam (even though during it is saving it too) - do not rush to close anything at the end. I cannot remember anything else he found surprising - not much. He thought I had made far too big a deal about Inspera. So hopefully it will be fine. He is at a massive table which I bought to see clients around for the exam and where he revises (I work from home) but he will need to make sure the materials he wants he can reach not get up and down to reach things acrross the other side of the table as that is not allowed. In fact I would not have too much material at all as it might waste time. It looks like if you do your room scan in the 1 minute allowed you might have the remaining minutes allowed for it as a kind of extra time but I might be wrong about that. The time for the exam seems to start when you start the room scan (but not for the prior ID check and photo).

The other point we discussed is apparently he talks to himself a lot (so do I so may be it is in the genes) but we decided he probably should not do that at all in the exam as it might look like someone else were in the room. Also his twin will be doing the exam upstairs in another room and we want as little noise as possible. I feel like I am running an exam center as I felt like for their GDL last year and their university summer 2020 final exams.

Meanwhile his twin just had to upgrade to Windows 10 from windows 7 which was probably worth updating to anyway (in the end he was not charged for that ) (and now hopefully will be able to download the software and do his test).... They want people to do the test by 72 hours of Monday's exam so today might be a good day to do it in my view.

Good luck to everyone for Monday whether doing it in person or at home.

 

[Jane Smith]

Just to let people know, there is a 7 Jan email from BPP. headed Exams and is about using your BPP email address and password to login which I believe we already know and if you cannot see when you log in to Inspera your upcoming exams you need to email Inspera (not BPP) and reminding people about the Drafting exam next week which is not on Inspera and is in the hub/VLE as we already know.

There is a 6 Jan announcement on the Announcements section of the Hub called Update 6 Jan which as far as i can see reminds people of things we know - you must read the Inspera guide if you are doing online exams and if not if you have not yet heard where teh venue for exams is you must get in touch etc etc. The only bit that puzzled me was "You are also reminded to look at the announcement about the Civil Litigation assessment posted recently." but I see it refers back to November's announcement which said

"As a result of student feedback following the Civil Litigation mock assessment in Inspera, we have taken the decision that the drafting question in the summative (final) Civil Litigation assessment will be either a particulars of claim or a witness statement only.


You will now not be required to draft a defence, although a defence could still be examined in a different way, such as in a multiple-choice question.


Please note also that it is possible to extend the size of the PDF panel which appears on the left-hand side of your screen. To do this, you need to grab the three dots at the bottom of the panel and the drag downwards. Please see the screenshot attached. (This is also referenced in the Proctored Inspera User Guide at paragraph 2.6.) We hope that this will reduce the amount of scrolling which is required in order to view the documents in the PDF panel while typing an answer in the answer panel."

Finally and not relevant to most people my son using an apple mac pro once he logged on has one eight of the screen in black which means less space for everything else, which is not great so he is going to see if Inspera can help on that. Inspera replied right away by email - apparently the issu eis that the Inspera window has not been maximised so once in the exam all he has to do is drag the Inspera window to fill the screen - in case that is useful to anyone else I am putting it here.

 

[Jane Smith]

The internet is annoying here. It just went down again and my son said it was down (each time is very very briefly) often yesterday and on both our separate BT broadband lines. I have just reminded him about the Inspera code if you are cut off. There is probably at least a 50% chance it will go down during the first exam too. We are outer London not outer Hebrides.

 

[Jane Smith]

It looks like tomorrow morning is the part of civil litigation which is not and the afternoon ( 3pm) the MCQs going by the timings. My twins feel it would have been better just to have one very long exam starting at 10am. The result of splitting it into two means you have to be energetic at 3pm again and it makes a much shorter gap between end of civil and start of criminal litigation the following day for last minute revision. I know BPP couldn't do 2 sessions on one day with the second starting earlier as some people have extra time, so this is probably the best they can do given apparently some people cannot do an exam which is 2 hours 45 minutes all at once.

 

[h1]

It looks like tomorrow morning is the part of civil litigation which is not and the afternoon ( 3pm) the MCQs going by the timings. My twins feel it would have been better just to have one very long exam starting at 10am. The result of splitting it into two means you have to be energetic at 3pm again and it makes a much shorter gap between end of civil and start of criminal litigation the following day for last minute revision. I know BPP couldn't do 2 sessions on one day with the second starting earlier as some people have extra time, so this is probably the best they can do given apparently some people cannot do an exam which is 2 hours 45 minutes all at once.

Yeah we were told that exams are being split up as previous students found it uncomfortable to sit their exams in 2.5 - 4 hr stints without being able to use the bathroom (as you can't get up for online exams)

 

[R203]

Hey all - if you're not supposed to have a second device in the room, but are also advised to use your phone to email the exam inspera email when there's issues, and are not supposed to leave sight of the camera, where would you then put your phone?

 

[Daniel Boden]

Hey all - if you're not supposed to have a second device in the room, but are also advised to use your phone to email the exam inspera email when there's issues, and are not supposed to leave sight of the camera, where would you then put your phone?

In the online lecture/talk re the exams we were told to leave our phones the other side of the room but if you have an issue then to literally look at the camera and speak to the microphone that you are getting up to get your phone because you are experiencing technical difficulties and then will be emailing Inspera. You won't be penalised if you do this so don't worry

 

[R203]

@Daniel Boden Thank you very much Daniel. Just to clarify, if by leaving my camera on the otherside of my room results in the room scan capturing it, will that be acceptable?

 

[Daniel Boden]

@Daniel Boden Thank you very much Daniel. Just to clarify, if by leaving my camera on the otherside of my room results in the room scan capturing it, will that be acceptable?

I'd imagine so yeah but don't worry too much about it, as long as you explain what you're doing then that's the main thing

 

[h1]

Hey all - if you're not supposed to have a second device in the room, but are also advised to use your phone to email the exam inspera email when there's issues, and are not supposed to leave sight of the camera, where would you then put your phone?

In the online lecture/talk re the exams we were told to leave our phones the other side of the room but if you have an issue then to literally look at the camera and speak to the microphone that you are getting up to get your phone because you are experiencing technical difficulties and then will be emailing Inspera. You won't be penalised if you do this so don't worry

To add to this, they also said that you'll likely not even be in proctored conditions if Inspera has failed you but, as Daniel said, just say straight into the camera what you're doing. This is what they have advised so won't penalise you for it

 

[h1]

And also - good luck everyone for Civil tomorrow and the next couple of weeks generally! We've got this

 

[Jane Smith]

I hope everyone is doing fine. My twins leave their mobiles outside the two rooms with the door closed for the exams (one is in a room upstairs and one is down in our house).

There has been no internet cutting out so far that they have noticed either, even though that happens most days here for about 1 minute which is a relief.

One did see a weird message after the first civil lit. paper. He watched his answers upload at the end of the exam to where it says 100% uploaded and he then deliberately did not close anything down and when he came back for the afternoon session saw something on the screen. So he emailed Inspera before starting the afternoon exam with a screenshot and they said it was normal and nothing to worry about. I cannot remember what it was - something that appeared on the screen implying possibly the morning exam had not uploaded. However he just got on with the afternoon exam and found the Inspera reply that all was well after that.

Make sure you put on the lights when you start if you think it might get dark outside when you are half way through the exam as one of mine found that was an issue on Monday for those doing exams from home.

So far mine think they are doing okay in terms of the answers to the questions, but I suppose we will not know until the results are out on 25 April.

 

[AOD]

I hope everyone is doing fine. My twins leave their mobiles outside the two rooms with the door closed for the exams (one is in a room upstairs and one is down in our house).

There has been no internet cutting out so far that they have noticed either, even though that happens most days here for about 1 minute which is a relief.

One did see a weird message after the first civil lit. paper. He watched his answers upload at the end of the exam to where it says 100% uploaded and he then deliberately did not close anything down and when he came back for the afternoon session saw something on the screen. So he emailed Inspera before starting the afternoon exam with a screenshot and they said it was normal and nothing to worry about. I cannot remember what it was - something that appeared on the screen implying possibly the morning exam had not uploaded. However he just got on with the afternoon exam and found the Inspera reply that all was well after that.

Make sure you put on the lights when you start if you think it might get dark outside when you are half way through the exam as one of mine found that was an issue on Monday for those doing exams from home.

So far mine think they are doing okay in terms of the answers to the questions, but I suppose we will not know until the results are out on 25 April.

The answers not uploading has been a fear or mine with the online exams. However, if they log in on browser on the Inspera page they will be able to see if the answers were submitted under 'Archive' (where they accessed their mock results).

That's all very good advice Jane, thank you. I leave my lights on even when there's light outside because my room can get dark when it's cloudy and I want to avoid any issues. So far for me it's been a lot better than expected sitting online exams. My internet went for a few seconds at a time in an exam, but that didn't affect my exam at all.

I also leave the hotspot open on my phone which I also place outside my room, so I can connect to it if there are problems with the home wifi. If you do this however, make sure the option for hotspot to switch off automatically if no devices are connected is turned off.

 

[Jane Smith]

Good point about Archive above and the other advice. Now the twins have now done the 5 exams including the 2 today they seem to have the hang of it.

So on to Drafting tomorrow which is not proctored. The 20 December email from BPP is about that exam. People will have that email, the Briefing Sheet and the empty Answer booklet (to download in advance in Word on which the answers will be written). It sounds like both the email and the briefing sheet have information about the exams so it is wise to read both of them.

I did find one thing with the 20 December email and Briefing Sheet a bit confusing:

The email says "There will also be a version of the paper which does not have a password and which will also become available 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start."

The Briefing Sheet says people are advised to to download the question booklet in advance at 10am the day before ie today (my twins have not done that yet) but that it cannot be opened until the password is released. I will ask them when they get back to try to do that download now just to see what it is - presumably something they cannot open yet but it might save time tomorrow to download it in advance. If however it is a "version of the paper" (as is stated) that might mean it could be different from the final version of the question paper you can download tomorrow at exam time. May be I am making a mountain out of a mole hill over this point.

The Briefing Sheet says to save the answer booklet with a specific name - your student number module name month and year . Do not put your name on the answer booklet anywhere.

The link where you obtain question booklet tomorrow is in the Briefing Sheet and will be from where, in advance, you have already downloaded the answer booklet ready to complete tomorrow. It would make sense to save that answer booklet today to your computer with the name they want it to have - your SRN etc.

The password is released on the Hub 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start. It is a pity it does not say where on the hub it will be issued. May be that will be obvious to regular hub users, but the hub can seem like a bottomless pit or needle in a haystack area at times. I suspect my twins will know as they did all their GDL exams like this last year so those exams may have been similar.

You can use soft copy materials this time unlike in the proctored exams. No collaboration must take place with anyone of course so no texts to anyone or conversations during the session or anything like that.

 

[h1]

Good point about Archive above and the other advice. Now the twins have now done the 5 exams including the 2 today they seem to have the hang of it.

So on to Drafting tomorrow which is not proctored. The 20 December email from BPP is about that exam. People will have that email, the Briefing Sheet and the empty Answer booklet (to download in advance in Word on which the answers will be written). It sounds like both the email and the briefing sheet have information about the exams so it is wise to read both of them.

I did find one thing with the 20 December email and Briefing Sheet a bit confusing:

The email says "There will also be a version of the paper which does not have a password and which will also become available 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start."

The Briefing Sheet says people are advised to to download the question booklet in advance at 10am the day before ie today (my twins have not done that yet) but that it cannot be opened until the password is released. I will ask them when they get back to try to do that download now just to see what it is - presumably something they cannot open yet but it might save time tomorrow to download it in advance. If however it is a "version of the paper" (as is stated) that might mean it could be different from the final version of the question paper you can download tomorrow at exam time. May be I am making a mountain out of a mole hill over this point.

The Briefing Sheet says to save the answer booklet with a specific name - your student number module name month and year . Do not put your name on the answer booklet anywhere.

The link where you obtain question booklet tomorrow is in the Briefing Sheet and will be from where, in advance, you have already downloaded the answer booklet ready to complete tomorrow. It would make sense to save that answer booklet today to your computer with the name they want it to have - your SRN etc.

The password is released on the Hub 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start. It is a pity it does not say where on the hub it will be issued. May be that will be obvious to regular hub users, but the hub can seem like a bottomless pit or needle in a haystack area at times. I suspect my twins will know as they did all their GDL exams like this last year so those exams may have been similar.

You can use soft copy materials this time unlike in the proctored exams. No collaboration must take place with anyone of course so no texts to anyone or conversations during the session or anything like that.

Hi Jane, just to clarify, you can open the question booklet but it immediately asks for a password. Usually, you can download password-protected documents but will still need the password to access them and I presume this is what it means. I actually can't download it as I don't have the option when it opens in my Chrome browser. Nevertheless, being ready for the 10 minutes before the exam starts, ready to enter the password should be good enough and if the p/w is not working for any reason, the non p/w protected one should again give the paper.

Thanks again for always summarising so clearly what the announcements say!

 

[Putt5353]

Good point about Archive above and the other advice. Now the twins have now done the 5 exams including the 2 today they seem to have the hang of it.

So on to Drafting tomorrow which is not proctored. The 20 December email from BPP is about that exam. People will have that email, the Briefing Sheet and the empty Answer booklet (to download in advance in Word on which the answers will be written). It sounds like both the email and the briefing sheet have information about the exams so it is wise to read both of them.

I did find one thing with the 20 December email and Briefing Sheet a bit confusing:

The email says "There will also be a version of the paper which does not have a password and which will also become available 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start."

The Briefing Sheet says people are advised to to download the question booklet in advance at 10am the day before ie today (my twins have not done that yet) but that it cannot be opened until the password is released. I will ask them when they get back to try to do that download now just to see what it is - presumably something they cannot open yet but it might save time tomorrow to download it in advance. If however it is a "version of the paper" (as is stated) that might mean it could be different from the final version of the question paper you can download tomorrow at exam time. May be I am making a mountain out of a mole hill over this point.

The Briefing Sheet says to save the answer booklet with a specific name - your student number module name month and year . Do not put your name on the answer booklet anywhere.

The link where you obtain question booklet tomorrow is in the Briefing Sheet and will be from where, in advance, you have already downloaded the answer booklet ready to complete tomorrow. It would make sense to save that answer booklet today to your computer with the name they want it to have - your SRN etc.

The password is released on the Hub 10 minutes before the assessment is due to start. It is a pity it does not say where on the hub it will be issued. May be that will be obvious to regular hub users, but the hub can seem like a bottomless pit or needle in a haystack area at times. I suspect my twins will know as they did all their GDL exams like this last year so those exams may have been similar.

You can use soft copy materials this time unlike in the proctored exams. No collaboration must take place with anyone of course so no texts to anyone or conversations during the session or anything like that.

Hi Jane,

I didn’t receive an email on 20th December but did find the briefing sheet on the Hub which summarises the points you mention above. Was there anything additional in the email that you think I need to know ahead of tomorrow?

Thanks again for your helpful posts!

 

[Jane Smith]

h1 - that all seems fine. On the password issue - my son has not downloaded as (same as you) it says you need a password so he cannot even download it unopened as suggested to be done in advance. I agree with you that being ready 10 mins before to download should be fine - that is what my son is going to do (I have only spoken to one of them today). May be some kind of link will appear 10 minutes before as they say in the instructions . Perhaps that will be on the Hub under the summative assessments where we can currently see (and my son has downloaded and saved to a file name with his SRN etc ) the answer book and the paper. My son was looking earlier for some kind of Turnitin system or login he thought he remembered from the GDL but did not find it so presumably it is just something to be found on the Hub. I didn't feel the instructions were that clear. He also wondered if the password might be coming by way of an email. He also thinks I just wasted too much of his time going into his room to talk about this so I will keep out of it now. I would have drafted the instructions more clearly. Anyway I am sure it will be fine. I would certainly recommend people start downloading and looking for all this at exactly 9.50am in case it takes a little while to find things on the Hub.

Putt: You will probably be fine without the email. It says The Turnitin link will be issued at 9.50am today. My son has the email I printed out now so I cannot refer to it and do not want to disturb him. It said something about if you are doing drafting you do not have to use Price Prior house style and that if you are doing a proof reading exercise you would need to say which words were incorrectly spelt. I am sure the briefing sheet will be fine on which to rely. I think the email said 10 minutes before (ie 9.50am today) there will be a link to the exam or questions or something along those lines. I think that will be on the Hub where you can currently access the Briefing Instructions and the Answer booklet but not the questions as that requires the password currently. Perhaps have that page open ready.

It will probably be really easy to find and start but as it is the first exam of this kind that is probably the only reason I seems to me to be confusing.

Good luck.

 

[Jane Smith]

Just in case of interest neither of my sons could log on at 9.50am yesterday for the Drafting exam. In the end they had to obtain the password from someone on the course and one of my sons could not even login to download the password protected paper due to BPP issues (our internet here was fine), so had to be sent that too by a friend (I think his twin was able to get the paper downloaded as he might have downloaded it the night before in some fashion). He said by 10.20am he still could not get in (he was constantly checking) so although there were 10 minutes allowed by BPP for the initial download etc and 5 mins at end to upload none of this is ideal and adds to stress. He was able to do the paper 10.50am to 12.05am, have the full hour and submit it but only because of those other measures.

It sounds like BPP need to buy a bigger server or have more bandwidth for these times when everyone will be logging in at the same time. if they emailed a password protected paper the day before and then emailed people the password on the day may be that would be less likely to crash etc. I htink one of my sons did do some kind of download the night before of the paper as I had suggested and one of the instructions had recommended - perhaps that saved to his download files even though he could not open it until the password was issued the next day.

I don't think the exam itself was too bad but the logging in, admin etc was not that great. Anyway it was fine in the end.

Onwards and upwards to this week's two BLP exams and at least everyone now has experience of proctored exams, web cams, room sweeps etc for this coming week so that side of it should be less stressful.

 

[h1]

Just in case of interest neither of my sons could log on at 9.50am yesterday for the Drafting exam. In the end they had to obtain the password from someone on the course and one of my sons could not even login to download the password protected paper due to BPP issues (our internet here was fine), so had to be sent that too by a friend (I think his twin was able to get the paper downloaded as he might have downloaded it the night before in some fashion). He said by 10.20am he still could not get in (he was constantly checking) so although there were 10 minutes allowed by BPP for the initial download etc and 5 mins at end to upload none of this is ideal and adds to stress. He was able to do the paper 10.50am to 12.05am, have the full hour and submit it but only because of those other measures.

It sounds like BPP need to buy a bigger server or have more bandwidth for these times when everyone will be logging in at the same time. if they emailed a password protected paper the day before and then emailed people the password on the day may be that would be less likely to crash etc. I htink one of my sons did do some kind of download the night before of the paper as I had suggested and one of the instructions had recommended - perhaps that saved to his download files even though he could not open it until the password was issued the next day.

I don't think the exam itself was too bad but the logging in, admin etc was not that great. Anyway it was fine in the end.

Onwards and upwards to this week's two BLP exams and at least everyone now has experience of proctored exams, web cams, room sweeps etc for this coming week so that side of it should be less stressful.

Totally agree, what a mess! I didn't know until I submitted for 12 that they had actually added on 30 mins so the new submission time was 12:30. An email to say this would have been nice!!

 

[Jane Smith]

h1, I didn't even know BPP had extended the end time by 30 mins but that feels very fair in the circumstances. In my post above I meant to type my twins did the paper from 10.05 (not 10.20) to 12.05 - ie they had the full two hours and I do not think the exam itself was too bad.

Anyway I think it is all going fine other than the property exam being quite hard. One twin's lap top has died this weekend and he is now having to get used to mine which is Windows not his usual Apple but it seems okay so far and he has downloaded the Inspera software again etc. At least it did not collapse during an exam. It seems to be that even with alternative apple cables/chargers his lap top will not recognise a charger is in there, but hopefully can be fixed after the exams when there is more time. In my day you could try a fix of removing the battery entirely (from old lap tops) and putting it back in but modern slim lap tops give no one that opportunity any more for self fixing.

None of these various tech issues, however, make my sons wish they had done the exams in person as they prefer to type them and not to have the issues of travel problems, train delays, commuting time, tube fares, being in the exam hall etc.

There was a 14 Jan announcement on the Hub (which I do not suggest anyone reads until after Wednesday's exams). It seemed to be about the Skills part of the course and checking you have the tiles / material and checking you can see your timetable and with a bitin the email for those doing the LLM. None of it seemed urgent to look at before the exams this week.