Cirrus is an end-to-end e-assessment platform that supports the full lifecycle of an assessment, from authoring through delivery, marking, and reporting. This article is for new authors, schedulers, and administrators.
If you are a candidate looking for information about taking your exam, see How to take an exam.
The five-step workflow
Work top to bottom, left to right. Most assessment processes in Cirrus follow these five steps:
- Library: build collections of questions, learning objectives, and media.
- Assessments: combine items into assessments, configure forms and blueprints, and publish.
- Delivery: schedule assessments for candidates, on screen, on paper, or with remote invigilation.
- Marking: assess open-answer responses through single, dual, or moderated marking workflows.
- Reports: read results, psychometric reports, and dashboards.
1. Library
The Library is where you store and manage questions, collections, learning objectives, and media. See How to add and use items and How to add and use collections.
Cirrus supports over 20 question types, split into auto-scored (Multiple Choice, Match, Hotspot, Drag and drop, Fill in the blank, and others) and human-marked (Essay, File Response, and others). Specialist types are available as add-ons:
- Programming for code-based assessments.
- Mathematical question through the SOWISO integration.
- Comprehensive integrated puzzle and Financial statement for specific professional exams.
Each item moves through a review workflow (Draft, Ready for review, Live, Withdrawn) so reviewers approve content before it goes Live.
2. Create assessments
You combine items into an assessment with forms, blueprints, and versioning. See Quick guide: creating assessments for the end-to-end flow.
A typical authoring process:
- The author builds items and shares the collection with a reviewer.
- The reviewer approves items, sets them Live, or returns them with comments.
- The assessment author creates the assessment, sets up forms or a blueprint, and shares it for review.
- Once approved, the author publishes the assessment.
3. Deliver assessments
Once published, assessments are scheduled and delivered. See Create a schedule.
You can schedule manually inside Cirrus, or programmatically through the Cirrus API. Delivery modes:
- On screen through a candidate's browser.
- Paper-based for printed exams. See Paper-based exam printing and Print and scan.
- Remote invigilation through Proctorio, Live Proctorio, or ProctorU.
- Locked browser using the Safe Exam Browser.
Candidates log in to their own dashboard to see upcoming and completed exams. See How to take an exam for the candidate view.
Invigilation
Cirrus has a built-in invigilation dashboard, independent of any remote invigilation tool. See Invigilation overview.
Invigilators can:
- See who has logged in, started, and submitted.
- Pause an exam or grant extra time.
- Send messages to individual candidates.
- See connection-loss alerts and detailed candidate logs.
- View Proctorio recordings when remote invigilation is used.
4. Mark submissions
Cirrus has a built-in marking tool for human-marked questions. See Marking quick guide and Marking workflow.
Supported patterns:
- Single, dual, or blind marking.
- Allocation by candidate or by item, random or fixed.
- Annotation directly on the candidate's response.
- Shared annotations between markers.
- Anonymous marking.
- Sample or rule-based moderation.
Markers see their progress against the full set, including which scripts colleagues have already marked.
Rescoring and appeals
If a question performs poorly or a marking scheme needs correction after delivery, use Rescoring to adjust the calculation. Individual candidate results can be flagged for re-marking when a candidate appeals.
5. Reports
Cirrus generates results and psychometric reports automatically. See Reports and Assessment performance.
Reporting splits into:
- Candidate results with export and score reports.
- Psychometric reporting at item and assessment level, including RIT and RIR values.
- Dashboards through Insights.
- External BI tools through the Data component.
All reports can be exported to Excel.
Integrations
Cirrus supports industry standards including SAML 2.0 for single sign-on and IMS Global's LTI for LMS integration. A REST API is available for programmatic access.
Ready-made integrations cover:
- Office 365 for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint inside Cirrus.
- ReadSpeaker text-to-speech add-on.
- Turnitin plagiarism checks.
- SOWISO for higher-education maths and statistics.
- Remote invigilation: Proctorio (automated), Proctorio Live (live), and ProctorU (live).
Some integrations require activation. Raise a request through the Customer Portal.
Accessibility
Cirrus aims to meet WCAG 2.2 AA. Candidates can adjust text size, use the ReadSpeaker add-on, and receive extra time for individual schedules. See the Accessibility statement for the current conformance summary.