Case Study: University of the Free State achieves 85% law exam completion amid connectivity outages with Synap LMS

Providing an Alternative Exam Solution for South African Law Students With Synap Lms the Challenge the University of the Free

The University of the Free State (UFS), a South African higher education institution with over 30,000 students, needed an alternative to venue‑based postgraduate law exams after COVID‑19 closures. Frequent load shedding and slow or unreliable internet meant traditional online proctoring wasn't viable, so UFS partnered with Synap and used Synap LMS to find a robust, low‑bandwidth solution that would support students with poor connectivity while reducing cheating risk.

Synap implemented a low‑internet proctoring approach and a suite of exam design measures—splitting exams into sections, randomising question order, allocating different variants to user groups, limiting skips, running a mock test to identify at‑risk students, and ensuring answers auto‑saved so students could resume after outages. Using Synap LMS, UFS delivered eight exams with multiple variants to over 850 law students; on average 85% of students completed their exams despite connectivity issues, and Synap continues working with UFS to support the remaining students.

University of the Free State

Henda S

Program Director