Ds has just done the weirdest exam

[HmmmCat]

What is the purpose of this strange exam format?

The exam was done online, but had to be sat in person.

The exam was 30 mins long, and students were not allowed to leave in the first and last 10 minutes, even if they had finished.

This 30 minute paper comprised 10 multiple choice questions. Once an answer was selected for a question, it was final and students were not able to go back and review their answers before submitting the paper.

There were several exam sessions today for this paper, so how could they prevent students from telling their friends the questions? We thought maybe there were 50 questions covering the course, and each student would be randomly assigned ten, but ds says that everyone appears to have had the same questions.

In person so that the exam had to be sat by the actual student themselves, rather than a proxy. No leaving within first and last 10 mins of the exam to reduce disruption to other students of late comers and early finishers. All fairly standard.
No idea why questions would be the same - was it a professional exam that required demonstration of very specific subject knowledge or needed on the spot decisions, so no going back on answers?

Just a Computer Science end of semester exam. Most of the other exams are online and can be taken wherever.

Why is it more disruptive to leave near the end than in the middle? Besides, 30 mins for ten multiple choice questions? I’m not a Comp Scientist and I could answer the two that ds posted on our family chat.

Also, in person to avoid proxies does not account for the same questions repeated across separate exam sittings.

The questions might have been set to appear randomly - so the order changes. So you can’t copy from your neighbor who is likely working on a different question.

A very short proctored exam - ten minutes or so - doesn't work for employing invigilators, latecomers, possibility of disruption. If they're not bothered in this instance about how students perform under pressure but just want to be certain they have some very specific fundamental skills and knowledge under their belts, it could be a sensible set up.

There's only one thing that strikes me as odd about this

That's different students taking the exam at different times, when they could've talked to someone else about it

Apart from that, it all seems pretty normal.

The only part that sounds odd is not being able to change your answers. At university level it shouldn't matter if you have very short term advanced notice of the question topics, so the multiple sittings wouldn't bother me.

Nothing particularly unusual. It's very disruptive to have people leaving early or arriving late - it breaks others' concentration.

It looks as though they are very concerned about students cheating so the online but in person, random questions, no changes might be to mitigate against that.

It's also a test of students' response to pressure - something that might be quite useful to assess for employability reasons.

oops double posted ...

The questions were not random. It appeared to be the same ten questions for everybody.

At 30 mins for 10 multiple choice questions there was no pressure.

The in person aspect would not have prevented cheating because anyone in the first session could easily have relayed the questions to anyone in the third or subsequent sessions.

This is why it seems weird to us.

At the end, students are likely to be checking over their work and looking out for mistakes or omissions, or desperately trying to finish. Exactly when you don't want unnecessary noise and disruption.

DS is doing a degree apprenticeship and some of the 'exams' in his first year were a joke. Multiple choice questions? I mean they don't even have those at GCSE unless you do Food tech....The essay word counts were so low he struggled to say anything worthwhile. 1000 word essay when he had 5/6000 words for his EPQ during his A-levels?

Having several exam sessions with exact same exam questions is a whole new level of ridiculousness though. DS's group at least have to do all their exams at the same time. The uni though is a pretty damn crap (think 90+ in the league tables) and one that he would never have gone to if he wasn't doing a really great apprenticeship which he loves.

Is this at a decent uni? Hopefully it's just a first year thing? DS's seem to be taking things a bit more seriously in the second year although he still thinks it's all a waste of time and is learning far more from his apprenticeship.

I would advise your son not to knock shorter essays. Writing focused, concise work is an important skill.

Anyone can write more words, given time, but that doesn't mean they should. The best students stand out when you mark short work.

So how many of the students did actually cheat or did they all just compare after. I find that most won't tell other students what questions are in such circumstances because it may affect their own grade if others get higher than them and they curve the grade.

I think you can justify anything if you try hard enough tbh. I really don't think this was a lesson in teaching them how to write concisely - more a lesson in what the lecturers were prepared to mark.

He has no real interest in the course though unfortunately or in standing out - none of them do. The others at his apprenticeship all work hard to stand out at their apprenticeship but all agree the course is terrible. They are all obsessed with programming but the lecturers are behind the curve.

I'm not trying to justify it - I don't know enough about the overall curriculum and assessment. Marking time could be a consideration, yes. What's not clear is what your son would get from writing longer essays that he can't practise effectively in shorter pieces of work. If he considers that he can't say much in 1000 words, that's certainly a skill he could work at.

Missed the second half - I'm sorry your son and peers aren't having a better experience. I could say having sat on course development panels that the conditions for offering degree apprenticeships can be quite stifling too. I can't tell whether they are right to think they should be doing more programming but I hope they are getting the opportunity to give feedback.

They couldn’t look over their work. The questionnaire went forwards only.

Each individual feature of the exam makes sense. It’s all together that it doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t really matter. I was just curious to see if there was some aspect that we were missing.

This.

Theres an old joke:

”Sorry this is over length. I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”