Interview with Twan Geerts, a senior lecturer of linguistics and French recorded on the 3rd of July 2025 at the HAN University of Applied Sciences

At the teacher training program for French lecturers at HAN School of Education, we train students in French language skills as well as in pedagogical and didactic skills. At HAN University of Applied Sciences, written exams are a standard method of assessment and can include open and closed question types. We also use hand-in practical assignments. Over the past few years, formative assessment has become more important.

The French teacher training department exclusively works with Ans summative written exams. Ans allows us to collaborate on an exam with colleagues, eliminates paperwork, eases conceiving and correcting exams, and simplifies taking exams and inspecting them for students. We also use Ans for formative assessment as it allows students to quickly gain insight into their scores and to get feedback.

Written exams need careful preparation: you need to have them checked by a colleague and make sure the lay-out is consistent and correct. They are not always easy to correct in an efficient way. As a lecturer, you end up with a lot of paperwork and have to check your grading for consistency. Additionally, you often need to calculate grades by hand and get complaints from students afterwards. Even after all of the exams are graded and approved, more paperwork awaits the teacher in the form of correctly archiving all exams (filling out forms, etc.).

Regrouping student answers for quick evaluation, automatic calculation of grades, allowing for discussions between lecturers to take place within the platform (before and after the exam), no need to enter the grades into the student information system, automatic archiving of exams.

It is intuitive in use and it allows us to share question banks with other universities. For summative exams it is the quicker and more efficient correction, calculation en entering of grades. For formative exams the benefit is the self-assessment of students and automated feedback.

Our department participated in a pilot during the pandemic, during which we entirely switched to Ans. Afterwards, Ans become the official examination tool for the whole university. It is easy to convince colleagues within the School of Education to work with Ans by showing the efficiency Ans can offer in conceiving and correcting open and closed questions.

Before implementing, ask your lecturers and students about their preferences, and show the solutions Ans has to offer. It is not limited to automatic correction of multiple-choice questions!

The possibility to share question banks with other institutions, which allows us to work with colleagues at other universities. The intuitive way open questions are conceived (with criteria), the possibility of grouping anwers given by students in 'fill in the blank' questions. We use the latter question type a lot and evaluation of multiple answers at once is very efficient.

Mainly the evaluation of exams before they are taken and afterwards with the 4 eye principle, collaboration with other institutions in one itembank.

Ans provides students with much more insight in their performance than merely a grade can. We publish students’ grades, number of points earned in an exam and their results per course objective. This has greatly reduced the demand for reviewing their exam in the presence of a lecturer. Formative assessment with Ans allows students to take an exam whenever they like and get feedback on where they stand.