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Giving Exams in an Online Chat Room
12/26/2001
One problem is that the students are more nervous than they are for a traditional written final, but test anxiety is present in any evaluation. This type of testing may favor those who can think on their feet. For the instructor, a problem is that the fabric of your chair imprints itself on your derrière if you do a number of these in a row.Many teachers ask whether the half-hour I spend with each student d'esn’t become an overwhelming time requirement. My online class has 25 students, maximum, each semester, so I spend 12-and-a-half hours on the final. This is comparable to the time I spend giving a traditional exam, when you factor in the time to proctor and grade it. Even if it d'es take an hour or two more of my time, it is more than worth it to me because the work is more interesting.
Exams are a bunch of dead documents on my desk; as I grade them I often think that a student knew more than they wrote, or wish they hadn’t gotten off track. A chat room final, on the other hand, is an ongoing personal interaction, during which I can get answers to those kinds of questions. The situation also keeps my brain from switching into neutral.
Perhaps the most interesting thing I’m learning as I do more of these is that some students are energized by a “rapid-fire patter” approach. They post a sentence, or even a phrase, and jump right in with both feet when I redirect or ask for examples or clarification. But other students need to express an entire idea first, or they become confused and nervous. This is now the main thing I watch for when I start the exam and something that becomes clearer with practice.
The worst problem I’ve run into with this method is technical trouble, such as when a student gets kicked out of the chat room in the middle of a session for some mysterious reason. I’ve had to deal with these (about one or two each term) individually, but the problem is as broad as online education. One simply has to deal with occasional technical glitches.
In general, I’m quite pleased with my experience of giving online chat room exams. An educational medium about which I was doubtful has forced me to do something that is easy to neglect in a traditional setting—use multiple methods of evaluation.
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