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- Set up your blueprint
- Create your OSCE stations (in Items)
- Combine OSCE stations into an Exam (in Item Sets)
- Schedule your Exam
- Publishing Exam
Deliver Exam
Logging In
- Log into Practique.
- Once logged into Practique, you will see the tab bar at the top:
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- Dashboard: where your current exams show
- Blueprints: the framework of the exam
- Items: the questions or stations
- Item Sets: the papers or collections of stations that make up a particular exam
- Exams: where you create the exams; details including date, time, standard setting to be used etc.
- Resources: where you upload documents used for each station e.g. Examiner info pack, actor briefing notes, student briefing. It can include documents, images, videos etc.
- Reports: where you find reports on completed exams. Note: not covered in this basic tutorial
- Help: access to Knowledge Base to get further help, Services Desk to report problems or bugs, Practique HQ for updates about Practique Note: not covered in this basic tutorial
- Settings: access to user management, device management, OSCE global marking settings and candidates & examiners management
Blueprints
This is how you can define the information about the structure of the exam.
- Click on the Blueprints tab.
You are presented wit this screen:
In order to run an exam in Practique you do not need a Master Blueprint but you always need to set your Exam Blueprint. - Click on Create Exam Blueprints.
The next screen you see is the create exam blueprint page.
Give the exam a name. (Remember it, you’ll need it later!)
For exam type, select OSCE.
Exam size is the number of different questions or stations you need. For now, enter 2.
The remaining 4 questions are optional. For now, we will leave them blank. But explanations have been provided below.
- Exam venue candidate capacity: This is the number of candidates per circuit. Include rest stations in this number.
- Number of blocks: the number of sets of questions used in a day. If 1 set of questions is being used all day it would be 1 block. If 2 sets of questions are being used it would be 2 blocks.
- Number of sessions: the number of times the exam repeats itself in a day.
- Number of circuits: the number of simultaneous exams (rotations) running. For example, if using two rooms of 10 stations each, with each candidate taking 10 stations, you would enter 2.
- Standard setting method: the default standard setting for the exam. If you select one at this stage, it can be changed at a later stage.
- Click on Create Blueprint.
You are now taken to a screen to edit constraints for your exam. Constraints are limitations on the structure of the exam. This would be needed if you wanted to allow the questions to be automatically selected from a bank of questions. We won’t look at these for now.
- Click on Back to Blueprints.
Items
This is how you create stations.
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Congratulations, that station is ready to go. Try repeating the whole process to make a second station. Give it a different name and questions.
Item Sets
In the item sets tab, you will be able to combine stations into an exam, or questions into a paper.
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- Click on the Item Sets tab
- Click on Create a new Item Set.
You are now presented with the ‘Create an item set’ screen.
- In ‘Exam Blueprint’ select the name you gave to your OSCE at the beginning
- In ‘Add Items Automatically’ choose No
- Click Create Item Set.
In this screen, you can now add the stations to your OSCE.
- Click Add an Item.
In the following page you can see all the stations created.
- Find the two stations you have made and for each one, click Add.
- Click Back to Item Set.
The item set is now complete, as it only requires two stations, as we set in the earlier blueprint.
It is important that you make sure the stations are in the order that you want them to be in, the system will automatically decide for you which is station 1, 2 and 3 etc.
You need to move the stations until they are in the correct order by dragging and dropping them.
Now we need to approve the set.
- Click Submit for Review
- Leave the boxes blank and click Submit
- Click Approve (Green button).
- Click Approve (Blue button).
Exams
In the Exams tab screen, you will set up the detailed exam information such as rotations, examiners and students.
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Our Exam is now made and ready to go! Let’s try it out.
Starting Exams
- Click the Exams tab.
- Find your exam, and click on View.
- Click on ‘View Sessions’
- Click Publish to devices.
The exam will be loaded on to devices. This should be done the night before at the latest. When you are ready, start the session: - Click on the ‘Dashboard’ tab
- Find your exam and click Start session
The exam is ready to start.
For examiners and marshals (invigilators) to log in, they need to use their ID, prefaced with the letter on this screen listed under ‘Pin / Exam Letter’. You can find the login details by clicking View > Logins.
The Login details pages:
Once you have finished the exam, you will need to close off the sessions Click Stop session.
You will be asked to confirm whether you really want to stop the session. Click Stop.
Warning If you have not completed all the marksheets or submitted all the marks before stopping the session you can force the session to stop by ticking Force stop session.
Your exam is now complete! The results are available in the Exams tab, by clicking Set Standard.
- Tip: If you want to run the same exam again, click View > View Sessions > Reset exam day. You will need the administrator's password to proceed. This will allow you to publish the same exam to the device again. You can use these steps to verify that an exam is displaying correctly prior to exam day.