Paper exams
PrairieTest supports paper exams: exams that students take on physical paper at a testing center, with scanned submissions uploaded by proctors after the exam. Paper exams are a center-administered feature; course staff supply the exam PDF and can review uploaded student submissions, but they do not handle scans or check-in directly.
When to use a paper exam
A paper exam in PrairieTest is right for situations where:
- The exam is physically delivered and taken on paper.
- A testing center is responsible for proctoring, printing, and scanning.
- You want PrairieTest to handle reservations, accommodations, the room schedule, and a record of every scanned submission.
Marking an exam as a paper exam
You need the Course Editor or Course Owner role to mark an exam as paper-based.
- Make sure at least one testing center where this exam is offered has opted into paper exams for your course. A Center Exam Editor enables this on the center's Courses page. Until at least one allows it, the Paper exam option is disabled. Centers that don't allow paper exams simply won't be offered to students reserving this exam, so they don't all have to opt in.
- Open the exam in your course, then go to Exam Settings.
- Find the Paper exam row and click the edit icon. Check This is a paper exam and Save.
The page reorganizes once an exam is marked as paper-based:
- The PrairieLearn UUID, PrairieLearn assessments, and Custom start URL rows are hidden.
- A Paper exam PDF card appears under the settings table.
- A Paper Submissions tab appears in the exam's nav.
- Any existing Custom start URL is cleared automatically; a paper exam isn't accessed in a browser.
If the toggle is disabled or rejected, the message explains why. Most often no linked testing center has allowed paper exams for your course yet. At least one must allow them, so ask a testing center to turn this on.
You cannot turn off Paper exam while an active exam PDF or any student submission exists for the exam. Remove the active exam PDF and ask your testing-center administrators to address existing submissions first.
Uploading the exam PDF
In the Paper exam PDF card on the exam settings page:
- Click Choose file and select your PDF.
- Click Upload exam PDF.
Once a PDF is uploaded, the card shows the filename, file size, upload time, and Replace / Remove controls.
- Replace swaps the active PDF for a new one.
- Remove opens a confirmation modal and unlinks the active PDF.
PDF uploads are limited to 10 MB. Files that aren't valid PDFs are rejected, even if named .pdf.
Center Exam Editors can also upload, replace, or remove the exam PDF from the center side, so you can own this yourself or delegate it to your testing center.
Reviewing student submissions
Once the testing center has uploaded student submissions, course Proctors, Editors, and Owners can review them.
- From the exam, go to the Paper Submissions tab.
- The page shows each submission with the student's name, UID, the session it came from, and the upload time.
- Click View to open the PDF in a new tab.
- Click Export all PDFs to download a zip archive of all submissions for this exam across all centers. Each PDF in the archive is named with the student's UID and the exam name.
A student may appear more than once for the same exam if they have submissions in multiple sessions: for example, an exam is interrupted and the student resumes in a later session. PrairieTest keeps every submission so you can reconcile what happened.
What course staff can and cannot do
| Action | Course Proctor | Course Editor | Course Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mark an exam as a paper exam | ⋅ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Upload / replace / remove exam PDF | ⋅ | ✓ | ✓ |
| View exam PDF | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| View student submissions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Upload / replace / remove student submissions | ⋅ | ⋅ | ⋅ |
Student submissions are uploaded by center staff at the testing center. There is no course-side workflow for managing them.
Course-administered sessions and paper exams
An exam marked as paper-based can still have course-administered sessions (for example, a session you run yourself, outside a testing center). PrairieTest will track the session and the reservations, but the PDF management features (uploading the exam PDF, scanning submissions) are deliberately not available for course sessions. Handle paper distribution and collection in person; PrairieTest's role for those sessions is limited to scheduling and reservation tracking.