Abstract:

During the university years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed restrictions on all the teaching activity, including online, remotely conducted exams. One sensitive problem was to ensure that the awarded grades show as fairly as possible that each student’s outcome is reflected correctly by comparison against those of his or her peers.

Regarding student grading, there are two main currents: Absolute Grading and Relative Grading. The former is the most widely used by teachers in Romania. The latter was chosen to grade the grid quizzes we built on the Moodle e-learning platform to test the knowledge of first-year students in the Information Technology courses we taught at the University of Life Sciences in Iasi, Romania, in the semesters affected by the pandemic.

Unlike the system of absolute grading, where a student’s score on a given test or assignment directly converts into a grade, relative grading means students’ marks fluctuate depending on how they did compare to others in the class.

The paper shows how relative grading was utilized to assess results in Information Technology exams and compares the awarded grades against those before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords:

Relative grading, Online exam, COVID-19, Moodle.