Can we reduce anxiety of students sitting remote exams? Sharing best practice between SPS and LHCS

Project leader(s): Gemma WarrinerFiona MoormanBecca Whitehead
Theme: Supporting students
Faculty: STEM
Status: Archived
Dates: April 2022 to April 2024

Winner of the 8th eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Award 2025.

Our project was a cross school collaboration between the School of Physical Sciences (SPS) and the Life, Health and Chemical Sciences (LHCS).

Rationale for our approach

In response to reports of student anxiety and performance concerns, enhanced proactive support was provided to SPS and LHCS students to de-mystify the remote exams processes, to facilitate them to take ownership of problem solving, and to attempt to increase their self-efficacy concerning their upcoming remote exam. This support was provided in a series of one-to-many exam preparation sessions offered to all SPS and LHCS students.

Scholarship methods

After the 21J exam period (June 2022), a survey was disseminated to 2500 students across both schools, 349 of whom completed the survey. Following a preliminary analysis of survey findings, e-mail interviews and focus group analysis was conducted the following Spring to facilitate in-depth exploration of some of the issues raised in the survey and to evaluate student perspectives about their exam experience after they had obtained their exam results.

Findings

Survey data shows that the exam preparation sessions reduced anxiety. It was apparent that some students experienced technical issues and time pressures which had a disproportionately negative effect on their overall their exam experience. In the interviews there was variation in feedback on the specific issues around the remote setting of their most recent exam, but overall there was a strong preference for the continuation of online exams. The focus group drew out the diversity of how students used their time during the exam Impact Anecdotal evidence from colleagues in the SST and on module teams suggests that the exam preparation sessions reduced the volume of student queries during the exam period. Feedback to module teams enabled them to improve support provided to students taking remote exams. The project leads contributed to pan-University guidance provided by Assessment, Credit and Qualifications (ACQ) for students sitting remote exams in 2022/23. Furthermore our findings informed the practice of other colleagues who implemented similar initiatives in their schools. Additionally, an ongoing scholarship project exploring student completion of remote exams has built upon our project findings.

Recommendations

We believe that our project feedback has helped to improve remote exams and hence we hope has also reduced sources of student anxiety. Our initial findings were disseminated within our schools, the wider STEM community and to ACQ colleagues. Findings from this eSTEeM project were used to inform FAQ guidance for SPS students. Disaggregated survey findings were also provided to individual module chairs in both schools to support 22J (October 2022) exam preparation. The project leads attended the exam assessment workshop and contributed to preparation of ACQ student-facing remote exams guidance. We continue to run the remote exam prep sessions with updated guidance based upon issues identified in our survey.