ANALYZING THE IMPACT OF ONLINE EXAMS VS TRADITIONAL EXAMS ON THE GRADES OBTAINED
Beatriz Cobo1, Ramón Ferri-García2, Luis Castro-Martín3*
1Dr. Beatriz Cobo, University of Granada, SPAIN, beacr@ugr.es
2Dr. Ramón Ferri-García, University of Granada, SPAIN, rferri@ugr.es
3Mr. Luis Castro-Martín, University of Granada, SPAIN, luiscastro193@ugr.es
*Corresponding author
Abstract
The COVID-19 crisis forced a transition from conventional on-site teaching to online teaching. One of the main concerns was the evaluation process, since online exams greatly increase the risk of cheating. This risk is hard to avoid and therefore we may ask ourselves whether there are significant differences in the grades obtained by the students depending on the evaluation system (on-site or online).
Our objective is analyzing the differences between the grades obtained by the students via on-site exams and those obtained via online exams in order to determine if they are significant. We also analyze if, for a given gender of the students, there are significant differences between both evaluation systems. Finally, we analyze whether there are significant differences between male and female students for a given evaluation system.
The study participants are the students of the Quantitative Techniques I and Quantitative Techniques II courses at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Granada from different academic years. A convenience sample of 299 grades obtained via traditional exams and 272 grades obtained via online exams is drawn.
The analysis of the data shows, via statistical hypothesis tests, significantly different means and variances between the grades obtained via traditional exams and those obtained via online exams. The mean grade via traditional exams is 4.28 and the mean grade via online exams is 5.09. When the same analysis is carried out for a fixed gender, the results show significant differences between the final grades obtained with each evaluation system by male students while there are no significant differences for the female students. When the evaluation system is fixed, we find significant differences by gender for traditional exams, being the mean grade obtained by females 4.56 and the mean grade obtained by males 3.97, while there are no significant differences for online exams.
In conclusion, the interesting results obtained invite us to further investigate the factors related to online teaching which are affecting the final grades of the students.
Keywords: online exams, COVID-19, gender.
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