Moving the Final Exam Online: Remote Teaching’s Biggest Test

Introductory first-year chemistry is well known for being the largest course to run each year at Dalhousie. As coordinator of the program, I’m regularly faced with challenges due to the course’s size but I’ll never forget the moment that I realized I would probably have to deliver a final exam online, with no proctors, to a first-year class of over 1000 students. This moment came a few days before official word of the cancellation of in-person classes at Dalhousie. I would be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind before the big announcement – with schools in the US closing at an alarming rate, the WHO declaring the outbreak of COVID-19 a global pandemic, and the increasing number of cases in Canada, the evidence was building and quite clear – an in-person closure seemed imminent, and the final exam, our last course activity, was most likely not going to go ahead as planned.  

As we all know, the in-person closure ultimately claimed more than just the exam period, with instructors and professors shifting the last quarter of the Winter semester online at an accelerated rate. Online lecture? Piece of cake, I can pre-record those and post them. Remaining labs? No problem, drop-box submissions and an emphasis on data analysis will do. Office Hours and Resource Centre Support? No worries, TAs can monitor discussion boards and I’m available by email or appointment if larger issues arise. But the three-hour individual final exam worth 40% of each student’s grade… what was I supposed to do with this in order to emulate what should have been? 

So, I guess that’s where the development of the final exam began. This was not going to be the same, or what “should have been,” in any way. Call it ego, denial, or just plain resistance to change, but preparing mentally for what at first I considered a sub-par final exam situation was challenging. A 40% final is certainly not what I would have chosen to do in an online setting (and it’s definitely not what we’re doing as the Fall semester shifts to online), but being locked into it with our pre-COVID-19 syllabus, we made due. But coming to terms with the fact that this was not what it was meant to be, was probably the first and biggest hurdle. This perspective shift has been monumental for me personally, as it not only allowed me to prepare a fair and appropriate final exam for the circumstances and my course, but also permitted me to focus on more important aspects of course development as I look forward to the Fall and consider what a fully online semester will look like.  

In building the final exam, we were lucky enough to already have an online homework platform that students were familiar with, specifically LON-CAPA. Not wanting to create any additional learning curves for students, we stuck with what we, and what they, would know. In addition, we had three small in-class quizzes that would be delivered online through CAPA. What luck! Three chances for students to practice in the “online exam setting” and three chances for us to monitor bandwidth usage to avoid technical issues* before the main event! (*Note, even with practice things go wrong.) 

Logistically speaking, the first aspect I looked at was time. The exam was meant to be a three-hour cumulative exam, so we decided to keep that aspect from our original plan. However, time limits can cause all sorts of problems. What about those students, registered with the Student Accessibility Centre, who require extra time? What about those students living in rural areas whose internet connections are spotty and unreliable? What about time zones – since many students returned home both nationwide and internationally? After getting in touch with the Student Accessibility Centre, we decided to provide time extensions for all students, as the myriad of issues that could arise seemed endless and unpredictable. So, students were allowed eight hours to complete the exam, allowing for stop time breaks or technology troubleshooting without the fear of “Will I complete the exam?” as an additional stressor. Furthermore, considering the issue of time zones, we allowed students to start the exam anytime within a 48-hour period*, with the exam opening 8am on a Wednesday, and closing 8am on Friday, Atlantic Standard Time. (*Note, secretly we had hoped some students would opt to take an extra day to study and start the exam Thursday to alleviate server load, but again things don’t always go as you might hope.)  

The next issue I looked at was academic integrity. Without proctors, how could I ensure that the exam guidelines were being followed? The simple answer is, I couldn’t. There would be nothing stopping students from acting dishonestly except their own personal morals and ethics. To discourage such academic misconduct, the first thing I did was make the exam open book/notes, but not open internet. The course (CHEM 1012/1022) is very application-based already, so “google-able” questions were mainly off the table. Along with an honour pledge, which was displayed at the beginning of the exam before any questions were presented, I went forward, trusting my students to do the right thing and follow the rules of the exam. Because I had spent the previous semester-and-a-half establishing relationships built on respect, I felt confident that most students (95% or more) would adhere to the exam guidelines. 

Finally, it was exam day. I didn’t sleep a wink the night before, and arose early to make sure that students could access the exam without issue. With some minor hiccups due to lag in communication between our servers and the students, everything seemed to be running smoothly. I spent the day cozy on the couch, laptop in hand, answering student questions as they came in. It was hours in and everything was well underway! What a relief!  

Then at 3pm I started getting emails about severe delays – 2 to 5 minutes of waiting between questions after an answer was submitted. I reported it to our CAPA administrator, Mark, and upon checking, we found the server was working at OVER 4000% CAPACITY!!!!! This NEVER happened in our quiz practice runs! While Mark worked on a solution to add more resources to our server, I fielded emails from students who were now reporting their browsers were timing out at a rate of 2 to 3 emails per minute.  

By 4:30pm we knew we would have to reset the exam server, which meant students would lose access to the exam (but all of their work would be saved), and it would take an hour or more before the exam would be available again. After answering over 350 emails from individual students, we were able to e-mail out a mass announcement to the whole class explaining the situation, lifting the timer (as students were now worried they would run out of time), and asking for patience, since the exam would be back up and running at 5:30pm. The emails kept rolling in, but now with messages of gratitude and understanding from our students who knew we were working on a fair and appropriate solution. Because, let’s face it, technology can be unreliable, plans don’t always go according to original design, and we were all in uncharted territory that required us to handle situations like this as they arose. 

 And so, the exam opened up again, and without any further issues, ended on Friday morning. The whole ordeal was over – and other than a 2-hour period of panic – went pretty smoothly.  

Looking back, there are so many things that I would change about the exam. But given the circumstances – the quick shift to remote teaching, an unforgiving syllabus with respect to best practices online, uncertainty of the full capabilities of our online platforms, and the overall anxiety felt by everyone due to the effects of living through a global pandemic and lockdown, we put the best interests of our students first and delivered what I would consider to be a successful end of term, including the final exam.  

This experience has proved invaluable as we prepare for a fully online Fall semester. The lessons learned, not only about how to deliver a final exam, but the resiliency and patience of students when you communicate frequently and truthfully with them about your intentions in the course, have truly helped shape our plans to build a learner-centric program. And, as we continue to wade through these uncertain times, I’m certain that we have, and will continue to do what’s best for our students both academically and empathetically.