Improving completion of remote examinations in physics

Project leader(s): Sally JordanJonathan NylkBecca Whitehead
Theme: Supporting students
Faculty: STEM
Status: Current
Dates: June 2024 to September 2025

The project seeks to extend earlier investigations into the factors that enable students to do themselves justice in remote online exams in physics and related subjects, by encouraging them to attempt the exam in the first place and to complete a reasonable number of questions to an appropriate level of detail, rather than taking such care over the production of their mathematical responses and diagrams that they only have time to attempt a small subset of the paper.

The focus is on the Stage 2 physics module, S217 (Physics: from classical to quantum) on which a number of initiatives have been introduced in each of the 21J, 22J and 23J presentations, with the explicit aim of improving completion and pass rates. In the first year that tightly-timed remote exams were introduced, performance on the exam was extremely poor, with a significant number of students failing to submit it and many submitting very incomplete scripts. Hypothesised causes for this included: the exam was too difficult/long for our students to complete in the allowed time; student anxiety about completion of a timed exam and online submission from their own home; lack of practice opportunities; the fact that students waste time by attempting to word-process answers and to produce sophisticated computer-produced sketch diagrams. Some of these factors were investigated in Warriner et al. (2022-23) and iterative improvements led to a much improved situation in 23J. However, vivas offered to students who narrowly failed the exam and had a high OCAS/OES difference, revealed that these were academically able students who had been let down by exam anxiety or poor exam technique.

Building on the initiatives introduced up to 23J (which have included provision of a Practice Exam in addition to the Specimen Exam Paper; module team led exam prep sessions; reflection on revision and exam preparation in TMA questions; provision of hints and solutions to “500 short questions”) significant changes are planned for the 24J presentation:

a change in assessment strategy from dual component with five of the six TMAs being thresholded but not contributing to a student’s final outcome to single component assessment in which all the TMAs contribute to final outcome. This change has been introduced with the explicit aim of building student confidence prior to the exam.
The introduction of an additional timed practice exam followed by two recorded tutorials in which a member of the team will be seen working through the exam and a second member of the team will be seen marking the script produced.

The project will evaluate the impact of the initiatives on the student experience of the exam and preparation for it, by way of surveys and focus groups in summer 2024 and summer 2025. It will also investigate the impact on the exam scripts submitted by students and on their exam outcomes. The project will focus on S217 but could easily be extended to include other modules.