Dilemma about Online Mid-term

Min Woo Joo

It has been a while since HYU announced that offline attending to school is on hold and students would have to keep taking their class online indefinitely until coronavirus subsides. A month passed since school started online classes and since this status is going to remain the same for a while, it is time to think about ways to do evaluation. Many students from countryside or abroad are at home because of the virus and because of that, it is a difficult option to take mid-term test offline even if we solve the ‘finding a way to take test without getting a virus’ problem first.

Some might ask ‘why not do an open book test to take the test online?’. Even though many professors did decide to take the test open book, concerns are brought up by many students that online test can’t stop students to cheat such as searching through internet or even taking test together as a group.

‘Everytime’ is the community app that only each university students can use. There are many mentions about finding people to take test together which is cheating and illegal. It was reported to various press and SBS 8’o clock news mentioned this issue. I think this is very bad for school reputation which would not only effect school but the honest students as well.

Dean of the HYU school of business informed students that because of these matters, in principle, the test should be replaced with assignments or take final-term tests offline only and assess with it. But there are still some classes that are taking online mid-term test which has too many areas to cover at final-term tests or mid-term test is necessary by nature. Mid-term test would be the moment our morals are challenged which it shouldn’t be. It would be more understandable if school came up with the way for evaluation and students would just have to concentrate on studying, not worrying about test methods.

Students must be scored how much they studied and only that and not determined by how much friends or senior they know to help their tests. I hope this doesn’t have any negative effects on honest studying student’s grade and get through this coronavirus crisis well together.