Students suffer anxiety as spectre of exam hall returns
STUDENTS have complained about taking tests in exam halls because it makes them feel anxious.
Life sciences students at the University of Glasgow have been told that exams will return to the pre-pandemic format of in-person, closed-book, handwritten tests.
Open-book, online exams were introduced in 2020 as a means of continuing assessment during the Covid pandemic.
A return to the traditional exam format means students will have to memorise information.
The university said that the decision was made partly because of the use of artificial intelligence, which could be used to cheat.
Rosie Mccrone, a fourth-year microbiology student from Perth, told BBC Scotland News that she would be sitting a traditional format university exam for the first time in her final exam before graduation.
She said: “It’s all anyone can talk about. I’ve not felt this anxious since I was a teenager in school.
“Up until now we’ve been tested on the way we format an argument, we’ve never been tested on our ability to recall information. That’s something we are going to need to teach ourselves. It’s a source of anxiety for a lot of people now that they’ll have to do it after never doing in-person exams before.
“Everyone’s really stressed because you can’t re-sit the year if you’re in third or fourth year unless you have a medical reason.”
Stacey Harris, a third-year human biology student, said that she had concerns about the resources available to students preparing for exams.
She told the BBC: “They are telling us to use past papers to study, but the past papers for the past four years have been for online exams and before that the course content was different.
“If it’s because of AI, why is it so sudden? AI was about in December during our last assessments.”
Ms Harris is concerned that the exam could affect her degree outcome.
She said: “I’m 30, the last time I sat an in-person exam I was 15. It is insane that they think it is OK to spring this on us at the last minute and they are showing no remorse.”
A University of Glasgow spokesman said: “The university has made the change to invigilated, in-person, hand-written exams in life sciences exams in response to the rapidly changing capabilities of generative AI tools, as a result of which online exams in many disciplines are becoming more susceptible to misuse by these tools.”