eSAM - What students can and cannot do
The article provides guidance on managing exam documents within the eSAM system, detailing how to add, open, and remove documents for students. It emphasises the importance of checking document accessibility and naming files clearly for ease of use during exams.
Giving students documents
Case studies, formula sheets, data sets, source extracts: anything students need to read during the exam goes on the Documents tab. They can read it inside the exam and nowhere else.
You do not need a particular profile for this. Any profile can carry documents — a closed-book exam with a formula sheet is an ordinary thing to set up, and the profile is not overridden by adding one. The Open book with documents profile exists only for documents that open read-only in Word, which needs removable storage blocked.
Adding a document
- Open the exam's eSAM page and go to Documents.
- Choose the file. PDF, Word or OpenDocument, up to 50 MB.
- Give it a title students see — "Case study: Redbridge Ltd" is more use than "final-v3.docx".
- Choose how it opens (below).
- Choose Add document.
How it opens
- PDF viewer
- Built into eSAM. Students can read, scroll and search the text, but cannot copy from it, print it or save it anywhere. Anything that is not already a PDF is converted for you. This is the right choice almost every time.
- Read-only in Word
- For a document students must work through rather than only read. It needs Word on the exam PC, and eSAM blocks saving it outside the exam. A PDF cannot be opened this way, and the form will tell you so rather than letting it fail later.
Watching it arrive
The list shows each document, how it opens, and whether it has reached the eSAM service. A document sits on Sending to the server for a short while — a large file over a slow line takes a moment, and the sending happens in the background so it does not hold up your save.
If it stays on Sending for a long time, or says the server would not accept it, remove it and add it again. If that fails too, the file type or size is the likely cause; tell your IT team what the page says.
Removing a document
Choose Remove. It stops being offered from the next time the exam is sent to the service. Do this well before the exam rather than during it: a student who is midway through reading a document that disappears will, quite reasonably, put their hand up.
What students can and cannot do
- They can open any document you add, from Exam menu → Documents.
- They cannot copy from it, print it, or save it outside the exam.
- They cannot open their own files — only what you have added here.
- They cannot reach these documents from Moodle. They are downloaded by eSAM using the exam's own credentials, which is why they do not leak to a student who simply opens the course page.
Things worth getting right
- Check the converted PDF. A Word document with complex tables, columns or embedded fonts can convert differently from how it looks on your screen. Open the exam yourself and read it as a student would.
- Name documents for a stranger. A student under exam pressure should not have to work out which file is which.
- Add them before the day. Uploading and converting a 40 MB document ten minutes before the start is not the moment to discover the file is the wrong one.
- Accessibility: a scanned image of a page is unreadable to a screen reader. If any student uses one, provide real text.
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