Past exam papers on the web: some notes
On this page:
Examples
Anyone
wishing to make use of the past papers archiving facility of the CMR
should contact the Learning technology Team (e-mail: ltt) to arrange for space to be made available.
Where this page refers to 'CMR administrators' it means members of the
WSU.
An example of the CMR departmental listing incorporating exam paper
links:
An example of a page listing links to exam papers by module, allowing a
web author to add a general 'past papers' link:
-
http://courses.essex.ac.uk/ec/examlisting.aspx
This is a standard file [CMR administrators need to drag a copy into a department's folder to
make it available for that department]. As with the listing above, this
option only includes modules that already have a presence in the CMR.
Linking to past papers
To link to past papers for a specific module, use a URL of the
following form (but see also the next option):
Naming the exam paper files
Filenames for each past paper must take one of the following forms:
- yearfirst5charactersofcode
- eg 1999ec111.pdf
This allows you to provide a single paper for the specified year's main
exam.
- yearfirst5charactersofcoder
- eg 1999ec111r.pdf
This allows you also to include a resit paper.
- yearfirst5charactersofcodea
- eg 1999ec111a.pdf
This allows you also to include an alternative paper (can be
useful where courses run separately in previous years have been merged
or reorganised).
- yearfullcode
- eg 1999ec111-1-fy.pdf
This allows you to provide a single paper for each of a module's variations for the specified year (eg separate papers for each instance
of a module taught at 3rd year and postgraduate levels, or taught
separately in autumn and spring terms each with different exams).
- yearfullcoder
- eg 1999ec111-1-fyr.pdf
This allows you also to include a resit papers for each variant
of a module.
- yearfullcodea
- eg 1999ec111-1-fya.pdf
This allows you also to include an alternative paper for each
variant
of a module (can be useful where modules run separately in previous
years have been merged or reorganised).
Any files not using this naming structure will either display
incorrectly or not at all in the past papers listings.
The listing will handle any file format (although Mac users must
remember to add the three letter file extension to their filenames).
Files should be in PDF and/or RTF format.
Modules that are not examined
By default, the exam paper listing displays links for all current
modules, including any which may not be assessed by examination. As these
non-examined modules will have no past papers available, users would
normally see an empty listing for such a module with a message saying that
no papers were currently available. To modify this so that the message
explains there are no past papers because the course is not assessed by
examination, you should put a dummy file in your past papers folder with a
filename of the following form:
- nonefirst5charactersofcode.txt
- eg noneac114.txt
Any kind of file will do, but a text file, as above, is probably
simplest.
Publishing past papers
Exam papers for each department should be archived in a folder called 'exampapers'
in that department's main CMR folder. Files can be added to this folder by
drag and drop, through Windows Explorer or My Computer. To do this you will need to mount a network drive to connect to the CMR server:
[CMR administrators need to create the exampapers folder on request
(this folder should use SSL and be restricted to domain users only), and
place an edited version of examlisting.asp in that department's main
folder (not using FrontPage).]