Perspectives of teachers and students towards COVID-19-forced online examinations in higher education institutions

PurposeWith the current COVID-19 outbreak, the majority of the higher educational institutes (HEI) are conducting online examinations to assess their students, where both teachers and students are facing various constraints. Under these circumstances, it is very important to understand the perspectives of teachers and students towards online examinations in higher education institutions and the factors affecting their perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThis study has been conducted with the mentioned objective through online survey responses and rigorous statistical analysis of the data. The data analysis has been performed and presented using self-explanatory bar graphs, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and sentiment analysis.FindingsWhile the students responded diversely for items in one of the constructs: scope for malpractice, the teachers agreed with the items, indicating that the online exams are not sufficiently effective in dealing with cheating and malpractice. Few more issues related to Internet connections, short time duration for uploading answer scripts are identified as problems and need attention while framing the rules to conduct the online examinations in future.Originality/valueA new questionnaire was drafted to measure the effect of different constructs. An attempt is made to understand the perspectives of both the teachers and the students towards online examinations with respect to each of these considered constructs with a rigorous statistical analysis.