Are online exams and results affecting students self-growth

The world was progressing at a stable speed. Everything was good and moving smoothly until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world. Ever since the world was afflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic everything went through a transition. All the businesses, service providers, public facilities, and governance went through a crucial change. everything started to shift from offline methods to online methods. The education industry also went through this change. Teaching transitioned from lectures in the classroom to lectures on conference apps. This was a remarkable change that affected the students’ lives significantly. Now after a while the students adapted to learning through online lectures where a very major problem arose.

It wasn’t a problem actually but a question that How do the educational institutes conduct exams online which are fair and prevent the students from cheating?

The educational institutes are using trial and error methods and experimenting with different ways to conduct exams but they have not yet succeeded.

In the prevailing situation conducting exams is a struggle for centralized as well as individual educational institutes. Individual institutes still somehow manage to conduct exams but to conduct centralized competitive exams seems impossible. A Multiple choice exam can now be conducted online. However, The problem of students cheating in the exam is a major concern as everyone can cheat easily. There remains no point in conducting exams since the main reason for conducting competitive exams is to see which students are better than others and it is impossible to figure that out in the online examination. Now the dilemma is that the institutes cannot keep delaying the exams in the hope that they can conduct them offline since no one knows when the pandemic will end. So they conduct the exams online in the MCQ method and pass the students according to grades from online exams. Even the exams for students attempting for a bachelor’s degree and even master’s degrees are conducted online.

Now how does this affect the students?

Exams are an important tool used to figure out the academic capabilities of a student which forces a student to study and gain knowledge. To gain knowledge about various subjects should be the main aim of students but it is a tiring process. to move on to the next stage they must have enough knowledge and to see whether they have it or not. It is easy to figure it out by the evaluation of the results of the exams that are conducted. Now the problem is that since the exams are conducted online the students don’t study because they know they can easily pass the exam without getting caught by the examiner since it is difficult for them to examine the students through screens. Students think of this as an advantage since they don’t have to study to pass the exam but in the long run, it will bite them in the back. Schools are designed in such a way that once a student passes a class the knowledge they acquired in that class is important in future learning. For instance, students learn how to do addition when they are very young but it is still practiced by them when they are in the 12th grade. So if the students don’t properly study during the pandemic there will be a knowledge gap of 2-3 years which may or may not affect them in the future for sure.

For higher grade students this is an even bigger problem. The students attempting competitive exams to get admission at universities are also in major trouble. This is because there is no differentiation between academically excellent students and academically poor students. students get marks based on who can cheat the exam better. The better you are at copying in a test the better your rank will be. This creates an unfair situation for the students who worked hard to score in their exams because students who deceived their way through examination got admission in recognizes institutes and the hard-working students didn’t. this discrimination demotivates many students and this demotivation is very unhealthy for their future. The demotivation in students can also lead to major problems like depression.

The students who are attempting exams for their bachelor’s and master’s degrees were in the predicament. They had to reappear for their exams even after clearing it online . Now they are at a very big disadvantage when they are looking for jobs. The employers believe that they don’t need people who got their degree without an effort because they think getting a degree through online examination is worthless. due to the pandemic, the unemployment rate has increased anyway. So while hiring an employee the employer prefers someone who obtained their degree offline and someone who has experience.

This creates a situation for the students who just passed, and where even after completing their studies are jobless and cant even gain experience. So the batches who got their degrees through online exams will always be at a disadvantage when they are trying to get a job. All of this will create a huge amount of stress on the newly passed out students.

In this current situation, online exams are the only option that the students and the institutions have. Even though it is not suitable, leading to problems and dissatisfaction among students in the mere future. Young students will lack knowledge, there will be a sence of discomfort among the high school graduates and stress among the degree holders. This may not be the exact problem which is caused in the future but the students will definitely face problems in the future. We can only hope that everything goes back to normal as soon as possible. And till everything transitions back to normal, there is a fair and just way of conducting exams.