Business Students Have Different Views about Their Performance and Approach to Study in Relation to Exam Formats, Depending on Attitudes Towards Digital Teaching

Abstract

The aim of this article is to see if there are substantial differences in attitudes towards teaching methods and choice of assessment between the students who are present at campus and to those who prefer the online version. During COVID-19, we got a unique opportunity to compare the students who took the same course and had identical exams. The same questionnaire is distributed to both groups in a compulsory subject in economics at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The choice of method is a pairwise comparison of the mean values using T-test. The findings show a significant difference between these two groups. Those who chose to be on campus had higher Grade Point Average (GPA) at high school, and they preferred the traditional form of exams. Those who chose to follow the lectures digitally favoured multiple choice tests, or home-based ‘open book’ exams. This means that both teaching methods and the choice of exam forms can have a major impact on the ranking of the students.