Accounting students’ performance in proctored online exams: early evidence from COVID-19 disrupted tertiary education learning

ABSTRACT

Given the debate in tertiary institutions on the use of technology for assessments due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, we compare the performance of accounting students in proctored paper-based and online exams. We examine exam scores across different demographic variables to provide early insights into the impact of these demographics on student performance. Our exploratory analyses indicate that students perform better in proctored online assessments than invigilated paper-based ones. The differences in student performance between these two assessment methods are associated with distinct factors, such as in-person and distance study modes, and student nationality. In summary, the findings of this study provide support for the adoption of online technology in managing exams.

KEYWORDS:

• Proctored online assessment
• paper-based exam
• COVID-19
• exam performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The data of this study cannot be made openly available because of confidentiality agreements and ethical concerns. The data samples and detailed coding procedures can be accessed by contacting the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available because of privacy or ethical restrictions.

Notes

1 Noyes et al. (2004) described cognitive workload as the mental interaction between the demand of tasks a student is expected to complete and the student’s ability to complete the tasks given the resources available. They found cognitive workload to be an enhancing factor in the case of UK students.

2 Campus-based study and distance learning programs.

3 Student nationality, and whether full-time of part-time student.

4 TopHat is a learning service application that allows an educator to create simple and interactive activities for students to complete. Students are allowed to complete most activities on TopHat at their discretion and are not invigilated or assessed.

5 The top five nationalities of the students are selected, namely, the first four – New Zealand, China, Malaysia, and India – and all other nationalities, which are categorised as Other. For ease of interpretation of this categorical variable in our regression, we convert the nationality into dummy variables and use New Zealand as the reference variable.

6 GPA ranges from 1 (lowest student capability) to 9 (highest student capability).