Below are common questions and things to keep in mind when conducting assessments using MyDispense.

Student enrollment

It is important to ensure that students are correctly enrolled in the assessment to ensure that they have access to it. Making sure that students have accounts that are enrolled in the unit and the studentgroup for the assessment is important. If the students are not enrolled correctly, then they will not see the assessment when it comes time to do it.

• Ensure that all student accounts required for the assessment have been created – typically you should use a CSV to do this. (https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/adding-students-using-csv-file/)
• Ensure that those accounts have been enrolled in the unit (https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/add-multiple-students-to-a-unit/)
• Ensure that the accounts have been added to the studentgroup used for the assessment (https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/setting-up-studentgroups/)

When using multiple studentgroups or multiple assessments, you may need to check if a student has attended the wrong assessment. For example if Group A is scheduled between 11am and 1pm and Group B for 1pm – 3pm and a student from Group B attends the Group A exam, they will not have access to it. You will either have to enroll the student in the Group A exam so they can access it (remember to remove them from the Group B studentgroup) or the student will need to attend the correct exam.

Assessment access

Once checking that student enrollment is correct, it is important to check that the start and end time of the assessment is also correct. You can do that by editing the assessment tutorial and checking the start times (https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/tutorial-assessment/). The start / end times for the assessment match your local timezone – or in the case of multiple campuses, the main campus timezone. Contact mydispense1@monash.edu if you need to know the timezone for your server.

In addition to checking the start times, the assessment must also be active in order for students to see it. The tutorial will not automatically activate when the assessment start time starts – it must be activated manually if it is inactive. If the assessment is inactive, students will NOT be able to see it.

If you have to change the assessment start time or set the assessment to be active, get the students to refresh the tutorials page for the unit. If the assessment does not appear, then the student may not be enrolled in the assessment.

When dealing with assessment access issues, always note down the student username. You can find it in the top right corner of the screen when the student is logged in (outlined in red in the screenshot below). This is so you can search for the username and check if they are enrolled correctly.

Login issues

Forgot username / password

_{Note: this does not apply to sites using Single Sign On (SSO)}

Some students may not have logged into MyDispense before the assessment or may forget their login details. It is recommended that you remind students to remember their username and password for MyDispense so they can log in without issues. For some students they may need to check their email for an activation link. If the student does not have the link you can look it up for them on the Admin Options -> Students page (Admins only) so they can set the password for their accounts.

2 Factor Authentication

Some Single Sign On (SSO) systems require 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) where you need to enter a code sent to your phone or email address. When using campus computers this for assessments, students may need their phone before they can login to MyDispense or your institutions systems. This can happen with student devices too if the 2FA system is strict or if the student does not ‘remember’ their access.

If 2FA is in use at your institution we would recommend giving students 5 minutes before reading time in the assessment to be able to login via SSO and confirm their access before putting away their phones. This will reduce overall disruption and not require students to request access to their phones at the start of the exam.

Important things to do before the assessment

Ensure students have the correct link

When accessing MyDispense, sometimes students will search for MyDispense in google or other search engines. Sometimes students will click on the link for the wrong site and will login there – even going as far as creating an account on those sites. During an exam, if a student has logged into a MyDispense site and they have access to no content, check that they are on the correct site by looking at the browser address bar.

For example, Monash University’s Australian campus MyDispense site is mydispense.monash.edu and Malaysian campus site is mdsunway.monash.edu . If a student doing an exam at the Malaysian campus were to login to the Australian site they would not see their content because they are not enrolled in it. When having issues, make sure that the student is logged into the correct MyDispense site. We have taken the measure of blocking all MyDispense sites from search engines, but this still happens from time to time.

Tell students to log out, then log back in

When a user logs into MyDispense, it creates a ‘user session’ that allows that user to access the site for 24 hours. After 24 hours, the user needs to re-authenticate and until they do so, their access to MyDispense will be blocked. To make sure this doesn’t happen during the exam, tell students to log out, then log back in – especially if they are using their own devices.

If the students have been using MyDispense the night before to study, then their user session could expire during the exam. This can cause issues where the student refreshes the page and loses their progress. An example of this happening can be seen below:

The prompt is telling the student that they need to login again and to click the button to do so. During the exam, students may not read this dialog and may close it. If you see this dialog, get them to click on the ‘Login to MyDispense’ button. This will open the main MyDispense page in a new tab where they can log in. Once they log in, they can return to the tab with the dialog open and click on the continue button and they can continue with the exercise.

In the above screenshot, the user session has expired in a Validation exercise – causing the prescription to not appear correctly. This is another instance of the login issue. In this case the student will need to save their exercise progress using the X button and reload the exercise. This is because the prescription may not be reloaded under certain circumstances, so it is better to ensure that the script loads correctly by resuming the exercise.

Therefore we recommend getting students to log out, then log back in to ensure that this does not happen during their exam.

Common issues during the assessment

Student forgot to submit

During the assessment there is a submit button underneath the activities in the exam. The submit button finalizes the assessment and makes it available in the exam manager. If students do not click on this button, it will not appear in the exam manager and the student will be listed as not having taken the exam. You can submit the assessment on their behalf following the instructions here: https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/submitting-a-partially-completed-assessment/

Student accidentally submitted early

Sometimes the a student will click on the submit button before they have finished all the activities in the assessment. You can reset their submission status and allow the student to complete the assessment by following the instructions for a partial reset here: https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/resetting-an-assessment/

Marking

When is an exercise auto-marked?

Auto-marking is performed when you first open an activity for marking in the exam manager. It will read the marks for the activity at the time it is opened and apply the marking schema accordingly. Once the auto-marking has been run it will saved the marks and the auto-mark system will not be run on subsequent re-loads.

This means that if you change the marking schema for an activity, the changes will not be reflected in any activities opened or marked before the change. In order to re-run automarking, you will have to reset the marking for the activity: https://info.mydispense.monash.edu/knowledge-base/resetting-exercise-marks/

When can I change the assessment marks?

The marking values can be changed at any time. The only caveat is that any activity already opened will need to have its marking reset in order for auto-marking to be run again.

The student didn’t do something in an activity

When marking an activity you can view the activity log (MyDispense 6 only) to see what the student did during the exercise. For example, if the student did not answer any Patient Questions, you can open the log to see if the student asked any. The activity log can be downloaded as a CSV file for assessment disputes and logs just about everything the student did during the activity.

To access the activity log, scroll to the bottom of the page when marking an activity. You will find the activity log section there. Click on the “View activity log” button to view the log in your browser, or click on “Download activity log as CSV” to view it as a CSV file.

Other tips

Open book assessment

Consider making your exam open book. MyDispense is an online simulation that links to external resources which means those resources are readily available to students and policing their use in an exam setting is difficult. Making the exam open book means that only chat / messenger programs need to be checked for.

I have a problem not covered here

If you encounter an issue not covered in this FAQ or in the Assessment user guides, please let us know at: mydispense1@monash.edu