4.1 – Change is hard
In fall 2014, I informed all D-HEST lecturers involved with exams at the computer that I wouldn’t be able to support them in the same way. After the huge amount of work around the summer session in August 2014, it had to be done. I couldn’t handle it anymore and there was no other quick fix. The survey results gave me hope and assurance that it would be possible. Fortunately, everybody was understanding and it has run more or less smoothly so far. (We are–at the moment of writing this–in the middle of the winter session 2015, in which there hasn’t been a new bug yet!)
For the lecturers, I guess, instead of worrying about how many paper copies they have to bring along, they have to be reminded about sending the exam link and the candidates’ list to LET. Instead of fighting with MicrosoftWord/Excel or similar, they fight with moodle. 😉 As far as I can say, slowly everybody has adapted. There are new tasks that are not so new anymore, and there are tasks that are much easier than before.
4.2 – Future at D-HEST
The amount of possible future exams at D-HEST is fairly low. Most of the exams with lots of students, i.e. most BSc HST exams (red columns in the chart below) are already done at the computer. Maybe there will be new exams at the computer from the BSc Food Science (LM Leistungskontrollen). Most exams on the Master level do not make too much sense to be done at the computer as it is (so far) a highly restricted environment. (The use of the Internet during an exam is not an exam setting that many people can yet imagine to be a good environment, unfortunately.)
Conclusion
In three short years, our department has tried out and endured many things with computer exams and it has luckily reached a very good level of maturity.
Thank you, all!