Examining the Effects of Flexible Online Exams on Students' Engagement in E-Learning

Online assessments are essential parts of online learning. There are some debates on quality of online assessments. Nevertheless the study considered online exams as an instructional activity and aimed to examine the effects of online exams on students' engagements related to course goals. The study was conducted on two cases, which are asynchronous online Bachelor's Degree Completion programs. While students were able to attend an exam in a day in the first case, students in the second case were allowed to attend exams anytime in a week. In order to collect data about views and preparations of students for online exams, 36 interviews were carried out. According to results, students had some individual and collaborative activities in the process of preparation for online exams. Most preferred collaborative activities included lecturing to each other, working on practice questions and getting informal instructions from experts. In general, students found online exams beneficial in terms of learning. In relatively low weighted online exams, communications between online students should not be seen as a problem, even if they have during the exam.(Contains 5 tables.)