It’s no secret that student mental health is becoming increasingly problematic. Many of the social, intellectual, and financial disparities and difficulties to mental health. In higher education in the UK and worldwide has been aggravated by Covid. As a result, there are more students in need of mental health services. Now than there were before the epidemic, particularly when compared to other populations. As a result, major stakeholder groups are lobbying for a “whole-university approach” to student mental health. That includes inclusive, mentally healthy structures, systems, and cultures across the university experience. Interest in how university teaching, learning, and evaluation might affect student mental health has risen as a result of this foundation.
Here are some of the reasons why exams shouldn’t be carried out online:
Unnecessary stress:
During a pandemic, one of every college’s and university’s main goals should be to prevent causing undue worry for our students. I’d argue that this is true even in the absence of a worldwide epidemic, but we’ll keep that discussion for another time. Exams that are timed are stressful. This isn’t the case for every student or every exam. But enough students in enough exams. Even if everything else in the test-taking setting is appropriate and encouraging, timed tests cause stress.
Nothing in our students’ test-taking atmosphere nowadays is normal or encouraging. A stressed-out brain is incapable of learning. Despite all of the data from learning science, we in higher education have been unable to eliminate the misconception that a small amount of stress is beneficial to learning. Students not able to cope with the stress of exams can look for services like take my exam for me that are present to help such struggling students.
Internet problems:
Combine inconsistent home internet access with the performance issues that Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, and other learning management platforms have been suffering as a result of dramatically increased utilization. Although the LMS providers appear to be doing a good job of growing their services to meet demand, there have been several instances of platform unresponsiveness. When taking timed online tests, especially those with only one question per page, bandwidth and other performance concerns might be fatal to the test-taker. Can you envision the seconds ticking away on your test clock as you wait for the questions to load? What you can do in this case is contact exam help services like best online exam help and get your exam completed with good grades too.
No correlation between speed and understanding:
Timed tests assess a student’s ability to respond swiftly to questions. A timed exam measures speed rather than comprehension. There is no link between recall speed and comprehension. Students who can answer questions fast are not always brighter than those who must ponder before responding. The speed with which you complete a test is not a reflection of your preparation, diligence, or expertise.
Cheating will always be an issue:
It’s not uncommon to hear that professors issued timed examinations to prevent cheating. The aim is that the students will not have enough time to look for answers elsewhere. Another fallacy that higher education can’t seem to shake is the assumption that timed tests prevent cheating. The truth is that students who want to cheat will find a method to do so. I guess we might implement an online proctoring system including cameras, keystroke recording, and maybe drones in our existing universal remote learning world. I’m not sure whether this will work, and I’m sure the rewards will be insufficient to justify the effort. It’s far better to establish an honor code that everyone in your community adheres to. Make a note of the honor code at the start of each exam. In your synchronous online sessions, discuss the reasons behind the honor code. Make an asynchronous movie on the honor code for your pupils to view. Using a quiz, require each student to commit to the honor code. However, don’t expect a timed test to do anything to prevent cheating. It is not going to happen.
Too much burden on students who need extra learning accommodations:
I have no doubt that the majority of schools are well aware of the actions that must be taken to guarantee that students with specified learning assistance needs receive additional time on timed examinations. If a student was granted extra time during residential sessions, that permission should be extended to remote learning. Even in ideal conditions, expecting our students to negotiate the mechanisms in place to allow for extended exam time creates an additional burden on these kids.
In a remote learning setting, acquiring extra time for tests must be more challenging. We should also be prepared to accept that there is a difference between students who are permitted to take extra time on a test and those who might benefit from it. Students (and their parents) who are clever educators have jumped through the required hoops to acquire more exam time. Those with little resources may not be on anyone’s list of students eligible for special consideration. These students then rather than learning look for online exam-taking services like best exam help service, to secure their grades.
These are some of the reasons educational institutes shouldn’t focus on taking their exams online as they can cause quite a lot of problems for the students.
