I, along with a number of my fellow students, are becoming increasingly concerned at the prospect of having to do exams in person in the summer for some modules. As students in our third year, we have never had to do exams in person due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is our belief that to make us do so for our final exams in our course would be incredibly unfair, and recognize that it's also unfair for students in other years of study as well. It would be much easier and kinder to wait until the new academic year to switch back to in person exams.

Students tend to prefer online examinations, as long as they have the ability to access them (Bashir et al., 2021; Hughes, 2021; Bell & Burman, 2021). They are less stressful and preferable to having to rely solely on memory as a gauge of how much we have learned (Bell & Burman, 2021; Stowell & Bennet, 2010), though of course there will be exceptions to this. We believe that having only experienced this less stressful, more fair examination procedures throughout our course, it would be unreasonable to force us into the more stressful kind of examination for our very last exams, and that if we were forced to do in person examinations it would have a negative impact on our grades on both and individual and collective level.

Multiple studies have shown that the effect of the pandemic on students’ mental health has been no less than catastrophic, with increased anxiety, stress and depression recorded around the world (Son et al., 2020; Wathelet et al., 2020; Faisal et al., 2021). Studies are beginning to show that lockdowns have had serious detrimental effects on cognition as well (Boals & Banks, 2020; Lahiri et al, 2020; Fiorenzato et al., 2020) We believe that compounding these difficulties for those who have experienced them by forcing us to do an exam in a form we are not used to would be both unfair and highly unethical. 

Not only this, but a number of us are still rather anxious about the risk of catching Covid-19 in an in person examination. Regardless of the government guidelines or university policy, the venues available to us for examinations have minimal ventilation with a large number of students in one place. Even if masks are mandatory for the examination, the risk of catching Covid-19, particularly the Omicron variant, would still be much higher than if the examinations were conducted using an online format.

I will also be sending an email (or other communication) to JMSU with this statement alongside other signatories that I've accumulated over the past two weeks later today (9/2/2022).

 

References

Bashir, A., Bashir, S., Rana, K., Lambert, P., & Vernallis, A. (2021). Post-COVID-19 adaptations; the shifts towards online learning, hybrid course delivery and the implications for biosciences courses in the Higher Education Setting. Frontiers in Education, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2021.711619

Bell, O., & Burman, T. (2021, August 4). Poll shows Durham Students Prefer Online exams despite return to regular teaching. Palatinate. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://www.palatinate.org.uk/poll-shows-durham-students-prefer-online-exams-despite-return-to-regular-teaching/

Boals, A., & Banks, J. B. (2020). Stress and cognitive functioning during a pandemic: Thoughts from stress researchers. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1). https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0000716

Faisal, R. A., Jobe, M. C., Ahmed, O., & Sharker, T. (2021). Mental health status, anxiety, and depression levels of Bangladeshi university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00458-y

Fiorenzato, E., Zabberoni, S., Costa, A., & Cona, G. (2020). Impact of COVID-19-lockdown and vulnerability factors on cognitive functioning and mental health in Italian population. MedRXIV. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.02.20205237

Hughes, G. (2021, May 19). Open book exams: Open season for cheaters or a better form of assessment? IOE Blog. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/2021/05/19/open-book-exams-open-season-for-cheaters-or-a-better-form-of-assessment/

Lahiri, D., Dubey, S., & Ardila, A. (2020). Impact of covid-19 related lockdown on cognition and emotion: A pilot study. MedRXIV. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.30.20138446

Son, C., Hegde, S., Smith, A., Wang, X., & Sasangohar, F. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 on college students’ mental health in the United States: Interview survey study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(9). https://doi.org/10.2196/21279

Stowell, J. R., & Bennett, D. (2010). Effects of online testing on student exam performance and Test Anxiety. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 42(2), 161–171. https://doi.org/10.2190/ec.42.2.b

Wathelet, M., Duhem, S., Vaiva, G., Baubet, T., Habran, E., Veerapa, E., Debien, C., Molenda, S., Horn, M., Grandgenèvre, P., Notredame, C.-E., & D’Hondt, F. (2020). Factors associated with mental health disorders among university students in France confined during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 3(10). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.25591