Higher education teachers' and students' perceptions of open-book and proctored examinations in the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education was forced to review its assessment processes. Competency achievement and academic honesty should be ensured in online assessments. In the Master of Educational Technology and Digital Competences of a Spanish University, the open-book examination model was implemented to respond to the new situation considering the characteristics of authentic assessment (adapted to students, intellectually challenging, related to practice, coherent with the didactic methodology, makes plagiarism difficult).  We wanted to analyze the relevance of this change in evaluation. The main objective is to analyze the differences between traditional face-to-face exams from before the pandemic and open-book exams with and without proctoring according to the perception of teachers and students. The research is of an empirical nature and quantitative approach and is based on the responses of 66 teachers and 301 students to a questionnaire with sufficient validity (chi-2/Gl: 2.453, RMSEA: .069, CFI: .99 and TLI: .99), and an Omega reliability coefficient of .882. Comparisons were made between model A: traditional face-to-face examination, model B: open-book examination with proctoring, model C: open book examination without proctoring. The results show that for teachers and students open-book exams with or without proctoring had no significant differences and are more in line with an authentic assessment than face-to-face exams. It is concluded that open-book exams with or without proctoring are suitable for authentic online assessment in higher education. It is recommended to contrast the results in other online university courses and to encourage authentic assessment in higher education institutions.