Printing and Scanning Random Variations

The Scoring Tool Plus has built in support for generating random variations of an assessment definition to help prevent cheating. The Scoring Tool Plus can print the bubble sheets for any of the variations and then recognize them when scanning. Additionally, the random variation capability can be used when pre-slugging sheets so that each student will be randomly assigned one of the variations automatically.

Enable Random Variations in an Assessment Administration

To use the random variations functionality, you must choose the Generate Random Variations option while creating the assessment administration.

This option appears only if the random variations option has been enabled in the underlying assessment definition. If available, it allows you generate either five or ten random variations of the assessment.

Print Assessment Administrations Using Random Variations

When printing bubble sheets, you can select to print a specific random variation. Once the assessment administration is created, you can click Print Assessment, and then print the test itself for any of the generated random variations.

• In the Random Assessment Variation for Form drop-down on the Print Assessment page, select the variation number you want to print.

Assign Random Variations on Pre-slugged Answer Sheets

You can use the Scoring Tool Plus to assign a random variation to each student.

1. In the Main Tab of the Print Assessment page, select the Pre-slugged Answer Sheets option.
2. Select the Print Heading Pages option to print a header page for each set of variations that exist for the selected students.
3. Select any other options you want to use to print the assessment administration, and then click Preview...  to check what will print, or click Print to print the heading page and variations. The variation number is listed in the title.

The bubble sheet is marked with the random variation so that it is automatically recognized when scanning. The value indicates the assessment ID and the variation so that it can be matched to assessment booklets.

When the printed test and the bubble sheet are handed to a student, make sure that the variation numbers match.

Scan Answer Sheet Using Random Variations

When scanning the sheets, the Scoring Tool Plus will track which variation was scanned. However, the variation each student received is not stored long-term on the server, so opening the assessment administration at a later time requires you to select a specific variation to view it correctly.

A different variation can be selected in the Select Random Variation drop-down. This rearranges the answer sheet view according to the selected variation.

An additional warning can be enabled for scanning when random variations are being used to analyze whether a student got a wrong test booklet (with a different variation number than the answer sheet) or possibly was cheating from another student.