Experiences in the use of a unique open-book exam paper for every student in a cohort.

Abstract

Accounting and Finance is a core module for undergraduate students taking the Bachelor or Integrated Undergraduate Masters in Electronic Engineering with Business Management and in the taught Masters in Engineering Management at. the University of York. It is also a popular option module for all Electronic Engineering undergraduate programmes. It is traditionally assessed by a 2 question from 4 closed book exam testing students’ knowledge and understanding of the subject at its application to Engineering business problems. One of the many consequences of Covid was the inability to hold closed book exams and a switch mas made to an open book exam where students were required to answer 4 from 4 questions. This change had the advantage of testing more of the module learning outcomes but the disadvantages of opening the module up for cheating and a doubling of the marking load. With the cohort size just under 200 students the issuing of all students with a unique exam was trialed together with automatically marking as much as possible. The pilot was successful in that a unique exam was sent to 94% of the students and most questions could be marked automatically. The paper describes the automation process and provides recommendations on how this could be improved up.