What's new in Cadmus?

An overview of new features, bug fixes, and improvements released in the Cadmus Teacher and Student apps

Explore our Latest Release and Past Updates:

• Access Codes and Backtracking - November 2024
• Cadmus Marker - October 2024
• Footnoting - July 2024
• Multi-Format Assessment: Feature Updates - June 2024
• Multi-Format Assessment - April 2024
• New Teacher-Environment - November 2023
• Respondus Lockdown Browser for Exams - August 2023
• Cadmus Exams - May 2023
• Optimizations and Bug Fixes - March 2023
• New and Improved Template Gallery - February 2023
• Equations - October 2022
• Include Hyperlinks in Instructions and Submissions - December 2021
• Integration with Canvas SpeedGrader - October 2021

 

Access Codes—Secure Exams Made Simple

Introducing Access Codes in Cadmus, to enhance exam security and maintain Academic Integrity.

• Access Codes are unique entry codes required for students to access their exams, ensuring only authorised participants can enter.
• Enable Access Codes:
  • Turn on Access Codes via Instructions > Requirements and Settings in Cadmus.
  • Generate a single code automatically or create additional codes as needed.
• Manage with Ease:
  • Copy codes individually or in bulk for quick sharing.
  • Label codes (e.g. ‘Exam Code 1’) to stay organised.
• For Students: When clicking the exam link in the Learning Management System (LMS), students will be prompted to enter the access code to enter the exam.

 

Eliminating Backward Navigation - Strengthening Academic Integrity Assurance with one-way forward flow

 

Introducing another layer of Integrity Assurance within your assessment: no question backtracking.

 

• Multi Format Assessments now have the option to enforce a one-attempt-per-question policy, encouraging the students to pause and review, which strengthens academic skills and subject-specific learning.
• Setting up Multi-Format Assessment wizard flow:
  • When Backtracking is set as ON, students can go back and forth between assessment questions, and submit multiple answer attempts.
  • When Backtracking is set as OFF, students only answer each question one time, with no option to go back to the previous questions.
• For students: When doing a Cadmus Multi Format Assessment with Backtracking OFF, students will only be able to submit one answer per question, completing questions in the order they appear in the exam.

Introducing Cadmus Marker

Cadmus Marker is designed to streamline the marking process and provide faster feedback to students.

When setting up a Cadmus exam, teachers will have the option to select Cadmus Marker in the Marking section within the exam settings.

Some of the feature highlights are below.

1. 1. Automated Marking for Objective Questions:
      1. Feature: Cadmus Marker automatically marks objective questions including Fill In The Blank, True / False, Multiple Choice and Short Answer.
      2. Benefit: Saves teachers valuable time in marking assessments.
   2. Marking Groups:
      1. Feature: Marking groups can be quickly set up by question or by student. You can choose to divide equally or manually, and exclude based on rules. Marking Groups can be edited at any time, and also snap marking view to the designated group.
      2. Benefit: Provides flexibility when creating and modifying marking groups, saving teachers valuable time in marking assessments.
   3. Adding Accepted Answer:
      1. Feature: Ability to change automarking rules, and add or delete accepted answers across all the students.
      2. Benefit: Provides flexibility and ease to quickly change accepted answers and apply them across all students to ensure consistency and grade fairness, saving teachers valuable time in marking and moderation.
   4. Fudge Marking:
      1. Feature: Ability to overwrite/change the marks of an automarked question.
      2. Benefit: Allows the teacher to easily and dynamically award fudge marks and review them during moderation.
   5. Real-Time Analytics: Get instant insights into class performance and identify trending areas that need attention.
      1. Feature: Real-time analytics offer insights such as a visual representation of the success rate across questions, the class min, max, average, pass rate and standard deviation, the most common incorrect response for a question and a visual distribution of responses.
      2. Benefit: Teachers gain instant insights into the overall performance at a class student, and question level. This provides the ability to identify the top detractors that can be leveraged for future use or for adjusting the question for future assessments.
   6. Feedback Release:
      1. Feature: Ability to release feedback (marks only, answers and comments only, or all answers, comments and marks) selectively by the student or to everyone at once, and to schedule the release for a future date & time. Teachers can also selectively withhold a student’s grade.
      2. Benefit: Flexibility and options for the teacher to manage grades and feedback release on a case-by-case basis.
   7. Viewing Feedback & Analytics:
      1. Feature: Students can view the feedback (all answers, comments and marks) and download the PDF of their submission. Teachers also have access to analytics to understand if students accessed the feedback, how many times, and for how long.
      2. Benefit: Students have access to informative feedback about their assessment and performance. Teachers have visibility of the feedback access rate, understanding whether and how their valuable insights are interacted with by students.
   8. Penalties:
      1. Feature: Ability to apply penalties on a per student basis or by flags, with exclusion rules.
      2. Benefit: Flexibility and automation in penalty creation and the ability to clearly view these, making it easier for teachers to set up and award penalties based on their unique criteria.
   9. Grade Book Integration:
      1. Feature: Automatically sync grades from the Cadmus Grader to your grade book for easy record-keeping.
      2. Benefit: Seamless integration makes it easy to sync and view class grades across all relevant systems.

 

Introducing Footnoting 

We're thrilled to unveil our latest feature: Footnoting! This feature will enable students to add and manage footnotes seamlessly within their assessments.

Here are some of the key features you can expect:

1. Easy Footnote Insertion: Easily insert footnotes directly within your text. Click where you want to place a footnote reference and let the feature handle the rest.
2. Footnoting panel access: Students have quick access to the footnotes inserted via a right-hand panel, which helps them edit and manage their footnotes, reducing rework and stress. This panel can be collapsed if desired.
3. Automatic Numbering and Reordering: Footnotes are automatically numbered sequentially throughout the document, maintaining consistency and order. In case of footnote addition or deletion, the right panel automatically reorders the footnote numbers so students don't have to spend time updating them manually themselves.
4. Autoscroll: Selecting a footnoting superscript in the right panel automatically highlights its footnote at the location within the editor.
5. Accessibility: Designed to be user-friendly for all levels of users, from beginners to advanced researchers, ensuring accessibility and ease of use.
6. Quick Reference Guides: The Cadmus manual allows students to access university-specific quick reference guides, which provide references and examples of properly footnoted papers that serve as useful references and reduce guesswork.
7. PDF Formatting: Footnotes within a certain page appear at the bottom left of the page in the student preview PDF and student submission PDF.

Feel free to read more about enabling and viewing footnotes as a teacher. Students can find more info on using and managing footnotes here.

Multi-Format Assessment: Feature Updates 

We're thrilled to unveil the latest feature updates in Multi-Format Assessments. These updates are designed to further optimise how educators conduct exams and ensure academic integrity.

Here are the new updates in Multi-Format Assessments:

1. Shuffle Questions—Teachers can now shuffle the order of questions for students. This way, each student will have the same questions but in a different, random order. The shuffle option will apply to sections, questions and sub-questions.
2. Shuffle Options in Multiple Choice Questions—Teachers can shuffle the order of answer options within multiple choice questions to increase academic integrity and prevent cheating in exams.
3. Multiple Correct Options in Multiple Choice Questions—Teachers can now select more than one correct answer for Multiple Choice questions. Auto marking will provide a partial score in cases where the student selects only one of many correct options.
4. Case Sensitivity for Fill in the Blanks and Short Answer Questions—Teachers can select whether auto marking of Fill in the Blanks and Short Answer questions is case sensitive. This option ensures that only exact answers are auto-marked correctly.

Multi-Format Assessment

We're thrilled to unveil our latest groundbreaking feature: Multi-Format Assessments (MFA)! This game-changing feature is set to revolutionise the way educators conduct exams and engage with their students. 

 

Here's what you can expect:

1. Effortless Exam Administration: MFA enables educators across universities to effortlessly create and administer mixed-mode exams, seamlessly blending objective and subjective formats.
2. Automated Grading: Say goodbye to manual grading! With MFA's state-of-the-art auto-marking capabilities, educators can significantly reduce their workload while ensuring accurate and consistent grading.
3. Advanced Submission Options: MFA offers advanced submission methods, providing flexibility and convenience for both educators and students.
4. Top-Tier Integrity Assurance: Rest assured, MFA incorporates best-in-class Integrity Assurance measures to maintain the highest standards of academic integrity and fairness.
5. Comprehensive Template Repository: Access a vast repository of templates to streamline the exam creation process and enhance productivity.

Here is how you can create your questions by choosing from the multiple question types in the dropdown provided. Feel free to read more about MFA for teachers here.

 

New Teacher-Environment

 

Cadmus has launched a brand-new Teacher Environment, serving as a one-stop shop for the entire assessment process — from creating assessment instructions to marking and providing feedback. As part of this update, we’ve introduced a dedicated Integrity Assurance page, which combines Assessment Reports to provide teachers with deeper insights into cases of potential academic misconduct or to validate students who have made genuine assessment attempts.

Feel free to read more about the new updates here, or watch our video on using the Integrity Assurance page here.

Respondus Lockdown Browser for Exams

Respondus Lockdown Browser can now be used with Cadmus exams for select universities.

It prevents students from:

• Accessing other applications
• Viewing external URLs
• Copying and pasting content from outside the exam
• Taking screenshots during the exam

Having Lockdown Browser enabled also provides added security for exams, tests, and other high-stakes timed assessments — especially when students bring their own devices to complete digital exams.

If you'd like to enable this at your university, please contact Support here. Otherwise, if it is already enabled at your university, teachers can find more information on adding it to their exams here.

Students may also find more information and prepare for completing their exams with Lockdown Browser here.

 

Cadmus Exams

We've made it quicker and more intuitive to set up exams and tests in Cadmus, with plenty of new settings and customisation options to suit your assessment needs. 

When setting up an exam, teachers can:

• Run live exams, where students sit the exam at the same time
• Run window exams, where students can choose when to sit a timed exam within a larger window
• Set up an auto submission or a restricted late allowance for students
• Add reading time to encourage students to review instructions before they start writing
• Manage special considerations (extra time, alternative exam sittings, or deferred students) in a dedicated area
• Control options for referencing, written feedback return, or PDF submissions sent to students when needed

Learn more about setting up exams for Canvas users or setting up exams for Blackboard, Moodle, or D2L users.

Students will also benefit from clearer time notifications and an intuitive flow for completing exams and tests. Learn more about the student experience for completing exams here.

Optimizations and Bug Fixes

• Teachers and students can add hanging indents to instructions and submissions (body and references) using the formatting toolbar, even if a referencing style hasn't been set in the assessment instructions.

New and Improved Template Gallery

There's a new experience for setting up assessments in Cadmus, starting with our brand-new Template Gallery. With 100+ new templates, it's easier than ever to add more scaffolding and support to an assessment. Teachers will find three types of templates in the gallery: 

• Common assessment types for all major disciplines.
• Formative academic skills tasks to support targeted skill development.
• Cadmus onboarding activities to help students familiarise themselves with the platform.

Learn more about using and customising templates.

Reuse past assessments

Creating a new assessment in Cadmus just got easier for teachers returning to the platform. In just a few clicks, teachers wanting to reuse assessments from past semesters can duplicate their instructions (complete with Resources and Settings), make any updates, and release it to their class.

Learn more about reusing past assessments.

Sync Canvas sections as Cadmus marking groups

Canvas users can save time on assessment management admin with a quick and easy way to create marking groups. Automatically sync any Sections already set up in Canvas into Cadmus to turn into marking groups — perfect for Canvas users with large marking teams, or marking according to tutorial or workshop groups.

Learn more about syncing Canvas sections as marking groups.

Bug fixes and improvements

• We've resolved an issue where the duration of a due date extension was not showing in the class list.
• Teachers can add a note to uploaded resources, providing students with more contextual information about how and when to engage with additional materials.
• We've added an option when setting assessment Requirements to allow students to make late resubmissions, without setting an extension in Cadmus. We only recommend enabling this setting if your university grants automatic extensions to students. 

Equations

We're excited to support even more assessments in STEM and Business with the release of Equations in Cadmus. Teachers and students can now insert equations using the on-screen keyboard or with LaTeX, making it easy to weave equations and formulas into submissions and instructions, no matter the experience level.

Learn more about equations for teachers or equations for students.

Bug fixes and improvements

• We've resolved an issue where Canvas users were seeing submissions incorrectly marked as late in the Gradebook after marking via Cadmus + Turnitin.
• To provide teachers with better information while marking, we've added Student ID (SIS ID) and word counts to the footer on each page of a student's submission.
• We've added in-app onboarding for educators, to help new users understand the core features of the platform.

Student IDs in the class list

Teachers can now see Student IDs (SIS IDs) while managing their class in Cadmus, as well as in Assessment Reports and Grade Downloads. Simply Sync the class list to pull through the updated student information into an existing assessment. Teachers can also search the class list using a student's name, ID, or email address.

Bug fixes and improvements

• We've improved our notifications in-app to make it more obvious to students if they lose internet connectivity while working in Cadmus, helping them get back online quickly during major assessments and exams.
• Withdrawn students in the class list will be sorted at the end of the class list by default, and excluded from any bulk class management actions like contacting and applying extensions.

Improved Class Management

We know how much assessment administration can take teachers away from supporting their students. That’s why we’ve made a heap of improvements to the My Class page in Cadmus, simplifying a range of class management actions in the platform.

It's now easier than ever for teachers to:

• Add extensions for multiple students at once
• Quickly move students between marking groups
• Add custom tags to track submissions and communicate across marking teams
• Filter by student progress (or lack of!)
• Contact groups of students via email to provide proactive support
• Get an accurate picture of enrollments with withdrawn students indicated in the class list
• Track if students have viewed feedback (when marking with Turnitin) and when students were last active in Cadmus

Learn more about managing your assessments in Cadmus.

Tables

We're excited to release Tables in the Cadmus editing environment, making it easy to structure and organise information in submissions.

With Tables, teachers and students can:

• Create clean and simple tables to meet common referencing styles.
• Use familiar table formatting functionality like captions, footnotes, colours, borders and merged cells.

Learn more about tables for teachers or tables for students.

Code Blocks & Inline Code

Teachers and students can now add code directly into Cadmus, expanding the range of assessment types supported by the platform for Engineering and IT.

With Code, teachers and students can:

• Add code blocks and inline code snippets into instructions, notes, and submissions.
• Enable syntax highlighting and line numbers in line with assessment needs.

Learn more about code for teachers or code for students.

Self-service Assessment Reports

Teachers can now download Assessment Reports directly from the Cadmus Teacher Environment, providing quick access to learning analytics to understand cohort activity and support academic integrity. Simply generate a report from the My Class page and receive it via email — no need to contact Cadmus Support!

Learn more about using Assessment Reports for academic integrity.

Self-service Activity Reports

Teachers can also download individual student Activity Reports directly from the class list, providing quick insight into learning processes and submission construction. Navigate to a student from the My Class page, and access the report online via the Student Options menu.

Learn more about accessing academic integrity reports in-app.

Bug fixes and improvements

• We've added the ability for teachers to grant extensions for dates in the past, for cases where extensions are approved after students have already submitted late.

Free resizing of images

Our most requested student feature from 2021! Teachers and students have more control over images inserted into Cadmus with flexible resizing and alignment. Simply drag the corner handles on an image to make it bigger or smaller. And click through the alignment options to suit your text.

You can also:

• Drag image files into the editor to insert them.
• Add and align captions to an image.
• Resize the image using the presets (fit-to-text, original size, banner size).

Learn more about images for teachers or images for students.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Fixed a bug where submissions were redirecting incorrectly from Cadmus to Canvas SpeedGrader when anonymous marking was enabled. This fix requires LMS Admins to add a Canvas API Key for Cadmus.
• Fixed a bug where some Blackboard users were seeing duplicated students in the Cadmus class list.

Include Hyperlinks in Instructions and Submissions

Teachers and students are now able to add hyperlinks in Cadmus. This makes it easy for: 

• Teachers to integrate online resources within the written task instructions.
• Students to embed links to external sources in their submission.
• Students to add links into the Notes section to easily track and manage research and references.

Learn more about links for teachers or links for students.

This paves the way for deeper linking of Cadmus Manual articles and uploaded resources within Instructions for teachers.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Updated the text editor in the Teacher Environment to the ProseMirror framework, bringing it in line with the Student Environment.
• Improved the behaviour of nested lists in the teacher and student text editors.
• Fixed a bug to ensure that student submissions are not sent to Canvas Speedgrader when Turnitin Feedback Studio is selected as the marking tool.
• Fixed a bug where hanging indent formatting was not being applied in PDF submissions sent to Canvas Speedgrader.

Integration with Canvas SpeedGrader

Our new integration with Canvas SpeedGrader gives Canvas users a new option for marking Cadmus assessments, creating a consistent feedback experience for academics, markers, and students. When setting up assessments in Cadmus, teachers can now:

• Choose between SpeedGrader and Turnitin Feedback Studio for marking Cadmus submissions.
• View students' submissions directly within Canvas SpeedGrader.
• Add SpeedGrader rubrics to Cadmus assessments.

Anonymous marking

Assessments can now be configured to hide or show student names during marking in the Cadmus class list and chosen marking tool. This gives teachers the flexibility to mark submissions in a way that aligns with assessment policy. Anonymous marking is available for:

• Submissions marked in Turnitin Feedback Studio (all LMS users).
• Submissions marked in Canvas SpeedGrader (Canvas users only).

Learn more about anonymous marking.

More academic support in Cadmus Manual

We’ve added new guides to the Cadmus Manual, covering key stages of the assessment journey. The articles have been created in collaboration with academic skills teams and learning designers, connecting students with a wealth of online university resources.

Bug fixes and improvements

• Improved the responsiveness of the formatting toolbar for Teachers and Students.