Online exams, which have recently become increasingly popular among educational institutions and companies, are a reflection of the digital transformation in education. Online exams not only bring the measurement and evaluation experience to the digital world by breaking the boundaries of traditional exams, but also make the talent pools of institutions independent from geographical borders.
In this article, we will discuss online exams, their rise, the innovations they bring and their potential future impacts.
What is an online exam?
In today’s world where instructional technologies are developing rapidly, the use of technology in education has increased in recent years with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Face-to-face or online education in educational institutions and companies has also created the need to evaluate the level of learning of learners. Although many measurement and evaluation methods are used in institutions, online exams are widely used today in terms of financial, efficiency and flexibility.
Online exams are a type of exam that learners can participate synchronously or asynchronously over the internet via devices such as computers, tablets and phones. By eliminating the time and space constraints and limited feedback capacity of traditional exams, it has become possible to provide personalized automatic feedback to learners or candidates with question metrics such as learning objective, question difficulty, subject, competency, etc. offered by online exam platforms.
- In educational institutions, with the widespread use of distance education programs, online exams are used to monitor student progress, measure knowledge and assess learning outcomes, providing valuable data to teachers and educational institutions.
- In companies, they are used to determine merit in appointment promotion processes, to measure the skills of staff, to determine the educational needs of the unit or individual, and to optimize the recruitment process. In these respects, it stands out as an effective human resource assessment tool for companies.
Why Learning Management Systems are Insufficient for Major Exams?
The main mission of learning management systems (moodle etc.) is to digitize learning processes and provide an enriched learning experience independent of time and space. Although they include many digital activities and resources for teaching and learning, they often include quiz-type assessment activities that do not prioritize exam security. Since there is little or no qualitative correlation of questions in the exams on these platforms, learners are only given score results and no feedback on the areas where they are deficient. This leads to the inability to produce the golden output of measurement and evaluation. This is because an exam has the potential to teach the deficiencies of the candidate as well as measuring knowledge/skills.
In addition, it has been observed that the summative exams (school exams, candidate evaluation or promotion exams of companies, etc.) held on these platforms, especially during the pandemic period, are extremely open to copying and their infrastructure is not suitable for high participation exams. For exams where the candidate’s face is not recognized, the test-taking device is not monitored and the test environment cannot be controlled, it is seen that these platforms also distort the perception of online exams and spread the view that “it is not secure”. However, what is actually being done is that online exams, which are extremely complicated and need to be implemented with a separate type of software with its own dynamics, are trying to be implemented with systems that are not developed for this purpose and the result is “pretending”.
Advantages of Online Exams
Enriched Exam Experience: Unlike traditional exams, online exams offer candidates a stable, fast and flexible exam environment with multimedia support. Examod’s online exams offer a user-friendly and institution-specific seamless exam experience with these features. Candidates can navigate between questions during the exam, consolidate questions with multimedia, and focus on the right one, the exam, by eliminating options as in traditional exams.
Measurement and Evaluation: The measurement and evaluation processes of online exams are as important for educational institutions, companies and candidates as their practical advantages. Visualized analysis and reports of the candidates and the exam are an output of the assessment and evaluation process, and these comprehensive outputs include quantitative and qualitative data such as learning levels, candidate strengths and weaknesses, and overall exam results.
Examod’s measurement and evaluation process generates comprehensive question and exam analyses for educational institutions and companies, including subgroup and supergroup statistics, as well as insightful exam and candidate results that visualize each metric. It also provides standard deviation, test variance, Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient and discrimination analysis of exam questions. Although a quality assessment and evaluation process includes the validity and reliability of statistics, it is just as important to “Focus on Points for Improvement”, that is, to visualize these statistics. For this purpose, Examod can create candidate-based reports with course, subject, learning objective, question attributes (or institution-specific labels). In addition, we can analyze all course/unit-based measurements by subject, learning objective, difficulty, etc. By offering the opportunity to analyze according to sub-attributes, we can present how much the teaching objectives related to the courses have been achieved. With Examod, we enlighten the way for institutions to achieve their teaching goals and learners/candidates to achieve their learning goals!
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Question Bank and Question Types: Online exams can be created using different question types such as multiple-choice, multiple-response, true-false, fill-in the blank, open-ended and short-answer through question banks. Question banks and question types provide flexibility for educational institutions and companies by allowing different learning levels and skills to be measured. Examod’s advanced question bank software allows all these features, as well as the ability to associate questions with learning objectives and add various question features such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, learning level, question difficulty. It also supports the creation of different types of questions with multimedia support such as video, audio, and the ability to add pictures to questions and options. The questions in the Examod question bank can be analyzed with the Performance tab, which includes advanced analysis of the exams in which the question is used, statistics such as average response time, difficulty and distinctiveness.
Online Exam Security
With the widespread use of online exams, several challenges arise. For exams to be successfully implemented, these issues need to be carefully addressed: Security, academic integrity, validity and reliability, technical issues and access. This is where it is important to carefully plan the digital transformation process of educational institutions and companies, and to identify the needs and goals of institutions by experts. Examod provides online exam security, which is the keystone of the measurement process, to educational institutions, companies and candidates with proctored and artificial intelligence-supported online exams.
Ensure candidate and session security in online exams with Examod!
- Ensure candidate and session security in online exams with Examod!
- Artificial intelligence supported face recognition before the exam
- Customizable proctoring types (Record and Review, Lockdown and Review)
- Video and screen recording of the candidate during the exam
*Violations performed by the candidates during the exam, their duration, video and screen recordings are submitted as a candidate proctoring report.
- Device and browser controls of the candidate (Screen capture, Full screen required, etc.)
How to Create an Online Exam?
Online exams have become a valuable tool for educators and practitioners while providing students with a more time and space-independent experience. In order to create an online exam, it is necessary to use a platform with a question bank and online exam support. If the learning management systems used by educational institutions or companies support this infrastructure, an online exam can be created by following the steps below.
- Preparing the question bank: A question bank containing the same or different types of questions appropriate to the objectives and achievements should be prepared in order to carry out the exam. Achievements should be determined by creating blueprint tables in the subject to be measured. Examod Blueprint Tables
- Exam setup and assessment settings: Exam setup and assessment settings are as important as the preparation of the question bank. At this point, it is necessary to determine the start and end times of the exam, to ensure exam security, to determine the evaluation methods and announcement options, and to select the questions through the question bank and announce them to the candidates.
- Post-exam assessment and announcement: After the exam is completed, the candidate exam results are announced with the assessment and announcement options defined in the setup phase.
Examod: Digital Exam & Assessment Platform, which blends the perspective of academics with user experience, offers online exam setup, implementation and visualization of results for educational institutions and companies in a seamless and stable way in today’s requirements. As easy as it is to create question banks from questions that you associate with learning objectives, question attributes and keywords in Examod; the creation of online exams is just as user-friendly and secure! In addition to the secure exam experience it provides, you can set up online exams using advanced exam setup options with blueprint tables. With Examod, which adopts the company philosophy of “Smart, Secure, Sustainable”, it is just a click away to take your exam securely!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Online exams are exams that take place over the internet and aim to measure students’ knowledge, abilities or skills. Unlike traditional exams, online exams are usually administered via computer or mobile devices. Read more about What is an online exam?
Unlike traditional exams, online exams support multimedia supported constructivist question types. In online exams, you may encounter different question types such as multiple-choice, true/false, fill in the blank, open-ended, short-answer, multiple-response.
To prepare for online exams, it is important to first understand the scope and content of the exam. It will be useful to review the topics, solve practice tests and try yourself under exam conditions. At this stage, you can prepare for the exam and question types by creating questions for yourself before the exam from course notes, course videos, audio recordings or internet sources through artificial intelligence-supported software such as TurinQ AI Question & Exam Generator. Also, don’t forget to test your computer or mobile device to meet the technical requirements of the exam.
- Check your internet connection.
- Check the device (camera, microphone) you will be participating with before the exam.
- Avoid distractions during the exam.
- Try to manage your time effectively during the exam.
If online exams are conducted through learning management systems and are not connected to additional proctoring software, cheating is extremely easy. In such exams, even different candidates can take the exams, turning all the effort spent on measurement and evaluation into waste.
Various methods are used to prevent cheating in online exams. These include controls and restrictions on the candidate’s device by the platform on which the online exam is conducted. In addition to these methods that allow limited proctoring, external online proctoring software/add-ons are also preferred depending on the type of exam. With these controls, various violations such as video, audio, screen recording, facial recognition, browser controls that the candidate performs during the exam are reported and communicated to the examiner. Examod offers a secure exam environment service to educational institutions and companies through the Examod Proctoring Extension, which it has developed in addition to its own surveillance rules for online exam security.