Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us in many ways. As educators, we have been challenged with the need to find ways to maintain high academic standards, even when necessity or fear keep students away from campus. In a very short span of time we made the move to teaching exclusively online, and it became necessary to assess students remotely, under supervision.

We decided to examine whether there was a difference regarding student success and grades between online and frontal exams in CS1.

During the 2021 academic year we were able to assess these differences because of a unique situation which presented itself. The first semester exams were online, while second semester exams were once again in person. We would like to emphasize that we did not compare the exams themselves with each other, since occasionally, discrepancies in difficulty can occur. Instead, we compared the average of three exams in one semester with the average of three exams in the following semester. Since our study took place over two consecutive semesters, we were able to ascertain that neither the study material nor the exam structure had changed. Hence, we are confident that our results reflect the real situation.

We found that the average score of the students who successfully passed the course was the same in both forms of the exam. No significant difference was found between the mean scores of the students who passed the exam. We also noted that, although there was a difference in the percentage of students who successfully passed the exam, the difference was not great: 58 percent in semester 2021A, compared to 62 percent in semester 2021B. It therefore follows that the average score of all students, including those who failed, was lower in the first semester. However, when we compared the scores only of students who passed the exam, the discrepancy was very small: 76 vs. 77, and not significant.

We suggest that the results in semester 2021A were lower because this was the first time the students were tested online, in a completely unfamiliar atmosphere. They had to deal with technical difficulties, such as typing the code into a file rather than writing it by hand, uploading files to the exam system, occasional internet communication problems, and the fact that the lecture slides booklet was in digital format rather than printed copy.
A student sitting at home, even if in a private room, might be disturbed due to background noise or other factors, which could also affect outcome.

We have seen that the online exam was able to accurately assess student knowledge of the course material, and indeed, many courses at the university continue to hold online exams.

We also found that other educators report that online exams are a very good assessment method.

McMahon et al. (2022) wrote that "asynchronous, online assessments have the potential to provide a better testing experience for students, and we hope that the flexibility they offer is here to stay."

Keywords:

Online examinations, COVID-19, CS1.