Information for the employees who will be arranging the exams with third party software or other types of webapps/services like Lovdata.

Norsk versjon - Eksamen med programvare - for ansatte

Topic page for exams | Exam planning | Digital exam |Pages labeled with exam

Using software or internet services in your exam

The use of software, web resources and services is constantly increasing in course-lessons and exercises. We are actively working toward making such tools available also in an examination setting. Software may be used for school, home, oral or practical examinations.

The registration for software needs has now been replaced by a combined questionnaire with the Exam Schedule form.

The form is sent to the administration of each faculty at NTNU twice a year. The form sent in April is for Fall planning, and the one sent in October/November is for Spring planning.

Please contact your local administration to report your needs for software, physical equipment such as headphones/drawing tablets, or for other online services.
This must now be registered as an "Extraordinary Need," and it must be ordered at the same time as the exam is being ordered.

The deadline for reporting needs for Fall 2023 is Friday, April 28, 2023.

We ask that you also register web services such as Git, Lovdata, GIS, Chemdraw and other services where the program or resource is running as a website.

Need advice? Contact us by mail. 

What is the expected processing time for these requests?

We strive to process the requests continuously. These requests must be processed individually as software packaging and license management are often affected by external factors that may lead to some processing time.

Software requirements should therefore not take place shortly before the examination. We will have to decline if there is too little time to handle the request, or if the students have received too little information about the expectations for software in the examination. 
Software that has been used in previous semesters will in most cases only need to be updated. It is worth mentioning that it must be specified if you want to use a spesific older version. We aim to keep the software up to date by default.

Why do you have to register services that do not need installation?

For both school and home exams, it is important that we are aware of the software and services in use, regardless of whether NTNU makes the software available or if it is a 3rd party supplier. 
For the school exams, it is important that we are informed about all resources and services so that we can ensure access for students with special needs who are using machines that are provided by NTNU for examination use.
For home exams, it is important for us to know what is included and expected in the exam assignments, so that we can provide user support should any problems arise in connection with these services during the exam. 

Capacity at school exams

We have a limited number of desktop computers used for 3rd party software for exams. These computers are powerful enough to run academic software and students will only have access to the online resources NTNU have specified. The current number of computers are as follows:

Trondheim: 597 (736 in total with the computers reserved for special needs accomodation)

Ålesund: 113 

Gjøvik: 171

Capacity at home exams

As of yet, there has been no need to limit the use of software in general for home exams, but there may be limitations for all the different solutions. Our virtual machine solution (softwarefarm / FARM) is powerful but does not have perpetual resources. The number of machines available for the RDP solution is limited, or may be limited by a maximum number of concurrent users of the license. So depending on how many people want to use the different solutions and what exam dates these courses are planned for is a balancing act we at the IT Department coordinate with the Examinations Office. 

If this turns out to be a problem, we will contact you.

We have an online spreadsheet with all of our current available software and services in the link below.
If you can't find the software/service needed for your exam, please contact us via the information at the top of this article.

Here's the overview of the current available software/services and also a complete list of previous registered software needs and requests:

The excel spreadsheet

Excel spreadsheet explanation:

1. RDP: Remote control of our NTNU campus desktop-computers. These are located in our examination halls and limited by the given amounts mentioned above. In collaboration with the course manager we will be delegating one computer per candidate. We also have how-to-connect-guides for the candidates ready. This solution was created due to Covid-19 especially to secure access to licensed software which cannot be provided through a VDI such as our existing FARM solution.
2. FARM: Farm is a virtual solution providing students and employees access to software. For more information on how this works please check out the Software farm guide on Innsida: Software farm - Wiki - innsida.ntnu.no
3. Install: This means that this particular software is also available for download and to install it theirselves on their own computers. We will be adding hyperlinks to those we know that are available in the overview. Most software is available through apps.ntnu.no.
4. NTNU campus computers: Software installed on NTNU owned computers. Desktop computers permanently installed in our exam halls. We are also able to use laptops for practical and oral examinations when necessary.