Use of take-home exam for remote assessment: A case study from Turkey

COVID-19 has changed the way we teach. Today, we have become far more experienced in the delivery of distance education and use of online tools. However, the quality of distance education and learning outcomes have become a matter of ongoing debate. Just as higher education aims to develop high-level skills in its students, researchers are seeking ways to perform valid and reliable assessment in distance education. Institutions and educators are also in search of assessment tools that can help prevent instances of cheating and plagiarism. However, performance-based assessment tools may also offer options to measure both high-level skills and in limiting cheating behaviors. In this study, we used the take-home exam as a formative remote assessment tool as a local case in Turkey. We surveyed the views of 43 undergraduate students about the quality of take-home exams as a remote assessment tool. The results showed that participants had a high quality perception about the use of take-home exam, especially with regards to being kept informed about evaluation and scoring, rapid assessment, the provision of feedback, and consistency of scope between assessment and course content. Whereas students highly perceived the use of take-home exams, they reported more moderate views regarding take-home exams increasing the level of interaction with their peers. The results of this study suggest that the use of take-home exams is significantly preferred by higher education students, that it is a reliable and distinctive way to measure students’ academic performance, and may increase student-teacher interaction through its formative use.