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Inspera Update – April 2026

Inspera Martin Jenkins

Colleagues, this April 2026 Inspera update provides details of new updates from Inspera, opportunities to pilot some Inspera developments and details on some sessions that we will be running to introduce future changes that will happening with Inspera over the next few months.  It concludes with some reminders in preparation for setting up your assessments for semester 3/Block 5.

Inspera Updates

Normalised Grading Scales

This update will make it easier to align the grades shown in Inspera with those presented in Aula.  This new grade scale option is available in Assessment settings, under ‘Use Grade Scale’. It calculates grades directly from marks achieved on a continuous scale from 0 to n with two decimal point precision, so aligning with the percentage grade calculated when marks are passed back to Aula.  The image below shows the view under the ‘Assessment Settings’ option when scheduling a test.

Mark by Question

Graders will now be able to choose if they want to mark by Candidate or mark by Question. Depending on the option chosen, the Inspera User Interface will adapt accordingly.  For more information see New Navigation in Marking.

Candidate Notes and Highlights

Students will now have the option to highlight important text and create personal notes while taking a test. These highlights and notes are only visible during the active test session and they will not be saved or accessible after test submission. If you want to make this feature available to your students then it will need to be enabled at the test level through the Design Settings.  More details found here: Notes for Candidates

Inspera Help Centre

The Inspera Help Centre, which is a valuable collection of support articles on Inspera has been updated. 

New developments for testing

The following features are being enabled on our Inspera Staging Server, which is our test environment for forthcoming developments from Inspera.  If any colleagues would like to explore these features, then please contact Martin Jenkins (ab5926@coventry.ac.uk) who can provide access to the Staging Server. 

  • Drawing Question type
    • This new Question Type makes the drawn submission the primary method of submission.  It will allow you to add images and text as a background canvas, which serves as a starting point for students. These images can be locked to prevent them from being moved or unlocked to allow candidates to interact with the pre-uploaded image.
  • Grading workflow
    • A major development that is forthcoming from Inspera is the introduction of customisable grading workflows.  The new grading workflows allow Coventry to design their own unique workflows, ensuring that submissions are allocated to relevant graders / moderators as required.   We will be able to create a bank of customised workflows which are selected when scheduling assessments.  Work on this development will be on-going, we will though be getting early access on our Staging Server.
  • New Authoring Interface
    • Inspera will also be releasing a new Authoring interface in 2026.  This is available currently on our Staging Server and will be demonstrated on the ‘Forthcoming Inspera Developments’ sessions that are detailed below.

Forthcoming Inspera Development Sessions

Given the number of Inspera updates that will be being rolled out through 2026 a series of briefing sessions are being offered for colleagues to provide more detail on these and to help you understand the implications of the changes.  The sessions will include:

  • Overview of Item Banks
    • Item Banks will be the organisational structure for all assessment content and are required to enable some of the other forthcoming features.
  • Custom User Roles
    • It will be possible to create Custom User roles for specific steps in the assessment workflow, for example providing view only access for pre-moderation. 
  • Item Bank Health Suite
    • The IBHS uses AI to provide a health check on multiple choice and multiple response questions when Question Sets are being created.  It checks the accuracy of the questions, provides feedback on wording of the stem and provides a breakdown of questions against Bloom’s Taxonomy.
  • New authoring interface
    • A demonstration of the new interface will be provided.
  • Drawing Question type.

Reminders- Getting ready for semester 3 and Block 5

Scheduling tests

  • Aula integration – when scheduling your tests for Semester 3/Block 5 a reminder that it is the Assignment Block integration which automatically adds students from Aula into Inspera and provides grade pass back.
  • Naming conventions – when creating your questions and question sets and then scheduling do please remember to use the required naming conventions.  These were updated in September to reflect the move to Block delivery.
    • With the move to Item Banks your assessment content will be located with other assessment content in that Item Bank.  Ensuring your questions and question sets are clearly identified will therefore be essential to ensure you can easily locate them for adding to tests and reuse.  If your questions and question sets are not yet clearly labelled, they will need to be updated when the content is moved across to Item Banks in 2026.
    • Naming Conventions article

Useful links and Inspera Support Information

Inspera support links:

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