August 17, 2020, by Jayda
How to navigate Online Assessments
Starting university in the midst of a global pandemic is going to be a bit strange. Many universities have had to adapt teaching and move courses online. With this move towards online learning, much of your assessments will also be online. Like many first-year university students, online assessments were completely new to me when I started at Nottingham. Any exams I had done were always on paper in an exam hall. So, if you are new to online assessments and want to find out a bit more about what they are like, keeping reading for some advice, and tips on how to prepare.
You should still revise
Online assessments often translate to open book tests which means you can reference your notes while completing the assessment. While this sounds great and an easier style of assessment when compared to A level exams, it’s still vital that you prepare by revising beforehand as you won’t know the questions. Any online assessment will have a set amount of time to complete it, so it’s better to spend that time actually completing the assessment rather than trying to find your notes.
Time management
Like in written exams, when completing assessments online time goes really quickly…like superfast. For many of my online exams I had 6 hours to answer two essay questions. Though this seems like a crazy long amount of time for an exam, in every one of my online assessments I submitted with just minutes to spare.
Hopefully I’m not freaking you out. This isn’t to say the online assessments cannot be completed within the given time, just that it requires some good time management. I find that it helps to plan your time before. If you have more than one questions to answer or task to complete, try to work-out how much time you can to spend on each question, that way you don’t accidently run out of time and start to rush your answers.
Read the instructions
I know this seems like obvious advice but unlike in school there isn’t really practice papers for university, each course carries out their assessments slightly differently. Furthermore, for many courses this might be the first year of online assessments, so be sure to read and re-read assessment instructions to avoid any errors and do as well as possible.
Location matters
Online assessments mean you can do them from anywhere. In some ways that’s great as you can complete them from the comfort of your room in your pjs but it also means that you’re not in the controlled exam hall environment. So, pick your location wisely. If you know you’ll get distracted at home or have dodgy Wi-fi then maybe go to the library or find an empty room on campus.
Click on the link below for some cool places to study on campus.
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