Free Exam Management for Colleges
OpenEduCat is open-source, genuinely free exam management for colleges that handles course-section-level exam timetabling, hall and seat allocation for thousand-plus cohorts, question-paper workflow,
OpenEduCat is open-source, genuinely free exam management for colleges that handles course-section-level exam timetabling, hall and seat allocation for thousand-plus cohorts, question-paper workflow, moderation, and transcript generation in either US-style GPA or percentage scales. It is built for the way community colleges, undergraduate institutions, and junior colleges actually run assessments: semester or quarter terms, multiple sections of the same course taught by different faculty, mid-terms layered on top of finals, and a registrar's office that needs the grade roll back inside the SIS the day after grading closes. The data model and workflow align with the assessment-and-grading practices documented by AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers), so registrars and exam-controllers recognise the workflow on day one rather than fighting a school-grade product.
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Course-section-level exam timetabling
Build the exam timetable against course sections (CRNs), not against generic 'classes.' A single Composition 101 course with eight sections taught across two campuses generates eight distinct exam sittings on the timetable, each with its own faculty proctor, room, and roster pulled live from registration. Conflict detection runs at the student level β if a single student is enrolled in two sections that would sit at the same hour, the scheduler flags it before publication.
Semester and quarter system support
Configure the academic calendar as semester (fall/spring + optional summer), quarter (fall/winter/spring + summer), or trimester. Exam windows attach to the term type β mid-term week and finals week for semester schools, three short finals weeks for quarter schools β and grading deadlines, incomplete-grade expiry, and transcript posting dates all derive from the calendar instead of being hand-entered per term.
Hall and seat allocation for thousand-plus cohorts
Allocate students to halls and individual seats across multiple buildings with one run of the allocator. Constraints include hall capacity, accessibility seating, separating students sitting the same paper, keeping cohorts together for proctor efficiency, and reserving overflow rooms. Seating charts, door lists, and individual hall tickets export to PDF for printing or to the student portal for download.
Question-paper management with version control
Faculty upload question papers into a secure repository scoped to their section, with role-based access for the exam committee chair and the department head. Multiple paper versions (A/B/C variants for adjacent-seat anti-cheating), embargo dates, and download audit logs are built in. Past papers move into an archive that students can be granted read access to as a study resource after the term closes.
Marks moderation and grade-change workflow
After faculty post raw scores, a moderation step lets the department chair apply curve adjustments, second-marker reviews for borderline grades, and post-publication grade-change requests with a documented reason and approver. Every adjustment is versioned with timestamp, actor, and rationale, which is what an accreditation visit or a student grade appeal asks to see.
Transcript generation with GPA or percentage scales
Generate official and unofficial transcripts in either US-style 4.0 GPA (with configurable plus/minus grading and quality points) or in percentage / letter scale for institutions that use them. Transcripts include course code, title, credit hours, term, grade, GPA, and academic standing, and export as PDF for registrar signature or as EDI / PESC XML for electronic transcript exchange networks.
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How is this different from K-12 exam software?
K-12 exam software is organised around a class β one teacher, one group of students, one timetable slot per subject per week. College exam management is organised around course sections (CRNs): the same Calculus I course may have twelve sections taught by nine different faculty across two campuses, each with its own roster, room, and exam sitting. OpenEduCat treats the section as the unit of scheduling, proctoring, marks entry, and moderation, so the exam-controller and registrar see the data the way it actually exists in the SIS rather than flattened into a school-style class register.
Do you support both semester and quarter academic calendars?
Yes. The academic calendar is configurable as semester (two long terms plus optional summer), quarter (three ten-week terms plus summer), or trimester. Exam windows, grading deadlines, incomplete-grade conversion dates, and transcript posting all derive from the calendar definition. Institutions running a mixed model β for example a semester undergraduate program and a quarter-based graduate program β can configure both calendars in parallel and assign programs to the right one. This follows the AACRAO Academic Record and Transcript Guide principle that the calendar definition drives downstream record-keeping rather than being re-entered per process.
How does it integrate with course registration?
Exam rosters are not maintained separately. Because course registration, section assignment, and exam management live in the same data model, the exam roster for any section is exactly the registration roster as of the registrar-defined census or roster-freeze date. Late adds, drops, and section transfers update the roster in place. For institutions running a third-party SIS such as Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, or Jenzabar, OpenEduCat exposes REST and XML-RPC endpoints to pull rosters and push grades back to the system of record.
Can we output transcripts in GPA or percentage format?
Both. The grading scheme is configured at the program or institution level, so a US community college can issue 4.0 GPA transcripts with plus/minus modifiers and quality-point calculations, while an international branch campus on the same install can issue percentage-and-letter transcripts. PDF transcripts are formatted to AACRAO's recommended transcript content and layout, and an EDI / PESC XML export is available for institutions participating in electronic transcript exchange networks such as Parchment or the National Student Clearinghouse.
Does it handle online proctored exams as well as in-person sittings?
Yes. Each exam sitting is configured as in-person (with hall and seat allocation), online proctored, or online un-proctored take-home. In-person sittings produce hall tickets, seating charts, and proctor door lists. Online sittings expose a time-windowed exam URL per student, with optional integration to third-party proctoring services via webhook. Hybrid programs commonly run in-person finals for general-education sections and online finals for fully online sections from the same exam timetable.
We currently run exams from spreadsheets. How hard is the migration?
Most colleges migrating from spreadsheets import three things: the course catalog, the current term's section list with faculty and student enrollments, and historical transcripts if needed for continuity. Section and enrollment data typically loads in a single afternoon from CSV. Historical transcript backloading is optional β many institutions keep the legacy SIS read-only for archival lookups and start OpenEduCat from the current term forward. There is no per-record migration fee on the Community Edition, and a sample import template is provided so the registrar's office can validate the columns before going live.
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