Online examination in university education: Students' opinions and attitudes

The aim of this study is to determine the attitudes and opinions of university students studying in different departments towards the online exam. The study was conducted with students from the Department of Mathematics, Physics, Preschool, Social Studies and Classroom Teaching at Dokuz Eylül University Buca Education Faculty in the fall semester of 2019-2020. This study is a mixed method study with qualitative and quantitative data to determine the attitudes and opinions of university students towards the online exam. The "Online Exam Opinion Questionnaire" developed by Yılmaz (2016) was used to determine students' attitudes towards the online exam. The scale is a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 17 items. This scale was answered by 108 students. The data were analyzed in SPSS 21 program and frequency, mean and T test were used in the analysis of the data. In addition, the Student Interview Form for the Online Exam, prepared by the researcher, was used to determine the opinions of the students about the online exam. The interview was conducted face-to-face with 22 students and the ATLAS.ti 9 program was used in the analysis of qualitative data. For the analysis of qualitative data, themes and codes were created and analyzed in detail with descriptive and content analysis methods. As a result of the research, it was concluded that the students who participated in the scale were generally undecided and somewhat positive. There was no statistically significant difference in the attitudes of the students participating in the study towards the online exam in terms of gender, department, age, online exam experience and the factors of the tool (computer, phone) participated in the online exam. Different from this, students' opinions about the online exam; emotional dimension (1), online exam system (2), technical factors (3), individual differences (4), course characteristic (5), test characteristic (6) and effects of online exam (7) sub-factors. As a result of the qualitative data, it was concluded that students who have online exam experience, students who use computers in daily life and students who are comfortable in character are more comfortable with online exams, but students who have had problems with computers before are more stressed. In addition, it was concluded that the students did not prefer open-ended questions much because of the keyboard use in the online exam, and generally preferred the multiple choice (test) method. All of the quantitative and qualitative findings of the research are given in the findings and conclusion section. Keywords: Distance education, online assessment, online exam.