The Transition to Online Exams on the BNurs Programme
Due to the pandemic, the BNurs 2020 cohort (325 first year students) undertook the ‘Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology for Nursing Practice’ summative exam online.
Previously, students had undertaken a paper-based exam on campus.
The exam was divided into four sections, the first three comprised multi choice questions including high colour diagrams for the students to label. The paper-based version of the exam was only available in black and white. The final section comprised free text questions. The student had 24 hours in which to complete the exam, however, each section was timed. The questions were randomised, displayed one at a time and backtracking was disabled to minimise any collaboration. We also allowed extra time for DASS students.
The marking burden on staff was vastly reduced as only the fourth section of the exam had to be marked manually. The first three sections were auto marked by Blackboard and the results fed into the Grade Centre. Furthermore, we didn’t require invigilators, paper copies of the exam or rooms to accommodate the students in a socially distant manner.
The student experience was much improved as students could undertake the exam at a time convenient for them within the 24 hour window.
A member of the FBMH team was on call during office hours to field any technical issues and the students could contact IT Services out of hours. However, very few students experienced problems.
In term of reusability for future cohorts, the teaching staff intend to add the questions to a question bank from which an exam paper can be auto generated for each student.
Whilst there was a small rise in the mean grade in comparison to the previous paper based examination in 2019 this was acceptable; if students were able to draw on texts to find the correct answer this was viewed as part of the learning process. There were no issues raised relating to student conduct.
Overall this was a great team effort involving the Unit Lead (Nigel Henderson) our BNurs Assessment Administrator (Adam Hunt) our eLearning Teaching Fellow (Jenny Kennedy) and of course Mo Islam from the FMBH eLearning team.
