Exam periods can be stressful for not only students and assessors but all staff involved. It requires careful planning and the risk of failure is taken into account in all scenarios – e.g. network failure or a sudden loss of power.

WISEflow utilises a wide variety of security measures in order to minimise potential interruptions of the students and their exams. These security measures take into account many technical complexities to avoid potential loss of data due to malfunctioning hardware or infrastructure.

Pre-Exam Security Measures

While a stable internet access and connection is preferable during the exam, internet connection is actually only required at the beginning of the exam to access examination materials and metadata.

Should the student experience a loss of internet connection before retrieving these data, it will be obvious to both the student and any present exam invigilators, as it is required to open the exam page before the exam actually starts during locked down exams. This static exam page shows a countdown and signifies that everything has been downloaded correctly.

This fail-safe makes it visually evident which computers fail to reach the countdown, and the flow monitor will simultaneously display which students have not successfully logged into the exam flow.

WISEflow Always Backs Up

When the exam has started, a stable internet connection – while preferred - is no longer required for the student to complete his or her exam answer or paper. Should a student experience loss of internet connection during their exam, WISEflow automatically backs up the document on the student’s own computer in an encrypted version.

This means that all changes up to the point of connection loss and all changes afterwards are saved, allowing the student to continue the exam without interruption. Should the internet connection re-establish, all data will back up in the cloud once again.

No Loss of Data

If the internet connection has not re-established at the end of the exam, the local copy will remain and be locked, and the student cannot spend more time than allotted by the exam manager. Exam papers can be uploaded to WISEflow after the end of an exam, meaning that there is an ample amount of time to establish an internet connection at another location. It is always possible to download a backup copy of the exam paper.

All content is automatically saved securely on a redundant object storage server side at least five times a minute, leading potential loss of data to an absolute minimum.