Abstract:

One of the academic outcomes of COVID-19 was the need to perform all exams off-campus. The new situation brought forward many challenges, both for the students and for the lecturers. While students must deal with taking exams in an environment other than a classroom while being watched by cameras, the lecturers need to write tests that are easy to submit online and evaluate electronically. The new settings might lead to undesirable effect on the students' grades. In this work we examine three undergraduate Engineering courses with different teaching methods and compare the performance of students in on-campus tests taken in 2019 and in off-campus (online) tests taken in 2020. All the courses that were chosen were taught at least 3 times before 2020 to ensure that the results are not affected by the primacy of a course.

The first course was a course in Signal Processing for Software Engineering. The teaching method in 2019 and previous years was to use presentations and write remarks on the whiteboard next to the screen. In 2020 the course was taught via Zoom were the lecturer shared the presentations with the students and added remarks on the presentations. The second course was a course in Electronic Circuits for Mechanical Engineering. The teaching method in 2019 and previous years was to write everything on the whiteboard and to give the students access to the lecture notes on the website. In 2020 the course was taught via Zoom were the lecturer shared his tablet-whiteboard with the students and wrote everything on the whiteboard. The Third course was a course in Matlab Basics for Electrical Engineering. The teaching method in 2019 and previous years was to locate the students in a computer room where the lecturer controlled the students' computers and presented a pre-made code that demonstrated the software abilities. In 2020 the course was taught via Zoom were the lecturer shared his Matlab screen with the students and taught using the pre-made code. In 2020, in all three courses, lectures were recorded, and the students were given access both to the lecture notes/presentations/codes and to the recordings.

In all three exams the students had to write their answers on paper and then scan and upload to the college website. All the students had to be connected to Zoom during the exam and to turn their cameras on. The students were observed by the lecturer and a college chaperon via Zoom. The exams were all open material so there was no fear that the students will use material they are not allowed to use during the test. The author compared the performance of the students in 2020 to that in 2019 to examine the effect of online testing.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, Distance Learning.