How do exams work for online classes?
Exams for online students are typically administered online. There will be no difference between how exams are used as part of the coursework in an online class as opposed to a traditional class. Exams will most likely happen at the end of particular sections of material. The way the class is structured will be up to the professor, but there will generally be smaller exams throughout the course, possibly a mid-term, and then one final exam at the end of the course. Exams will aim to test a student's comprehension of the material covered and can take on any format that best tests that knowledge.
Aside from these similarities, everything about how tests are actually administered in online courses differs from traditional classes. Students take the tests on their own computers in a location of their choosing. Because of the nature of distance learning, professors have no way to oversee the students while they take tests. For this reason, tests are typically open-book, open-note, and may even be conducted under the assumption that students can use one another for help.
In order to make sure students don't take advantage of these aspects of test taking in a negative way, the tests are typically structured to make it very difficult to simply copy another student's answers. For example, many professors ask short answer questions that require both in-depth knowledge of facts and dates and overall comprehension of the section as a whole. These types of tests are also usually timed, making it difficult for students to adequately answer the question if they are under-prepared.
Sometimes multiple choice and true and false formats are used, but these are definitely timed. Usually, these formats will be used for tests that are not weighted as highly as a mid-term or final.
Some tests are taken through the college website by logging into a particular program. The students complete the test on the website, which usually times the test-taker, and then log out of the program. For more writing-based tests, students can download test questions into a program on their personal computers, such as Word, save their completed answers, and then upload them to be sent back to their professors.
