Photo: Manuel Faba / 123rf
Some Massey University students affected by this week's online exam failures fear missing out on their assessments all together, while others are facing a re-sit.
The university's online exam system ran into technical problems from Monday to Wednesday, leaving students panicked and distressed.
Now, a petition has been launched to ditch the online system altogether.
On Monday afternoon the man who launched that petition, Alex Murray, headed into Massey University's Palmerston North campus to sit an online accounting exam.
He lives rurally so his internet is not reliable enough for the requirements of Massey's online supervised exams, known as OSEs.
"I had to book a room in the library to be able to sit it. I sat there for three hours trying to get into the exam, which I couldn't, and I gave up because I couldn't handle the stress," Murray said.
"I went back the next day at 8am for another two hours and I could not complete the exam."
Murray said he encountered a range of error messages and problems.
On Wednesday the university cancelled the online supervised exams - where software monitors students via webcams - for the rest of the semester and has now reverted to online exams without monitoring.
It also extended the timeframe in which exams affected by the problems could be sat, but Murray said he could not fit his in before it closed on Thursday afternoon, after his previous attempts to log on didn't work.
"I've also got a take-home exam to sit by tomorrow. That's my plan for this afternoon," he said on Thursday morning.
"I've got meetings so I can't sit the [accountancy] exam. It closed at 2.30pm. It's not enough time for students to be able to re-jig their schedules."
He would apply for an impaired performance grade or aegrotat pass.
"The exam was worth 50 percent of my grade. I really wanted to sit it. I had been studying for weeks trying to build up to this point so I felt like I couldn't unleash my potential."
Murray's online petition at change.org calls on Massey to stop using online supervised exams. It has attracted more than 1000 signatures.
He wanted to discuss this with Massey senior management.
"Ever since the OSEs were launched there's been massive backlash with privacy concerns - students feeling uncomfortable that they have to show their bedrooms.
"[For] the software they have to upload a room scan. This consists of panning the camera round to show underneath their desks, their walls, their ceilings - basically a 360-[degree] room view.
"They have to pull up their sleeves to show their wrists to make sure they haven't written any notes."
Exam performance 'impeded'
Auckland distance student Stas Chalaev said he took almost three hours to log on to his accounting exam on Monday, and was initially worried he had done something wrong.
He had taken time off work to do the exam.
"Mentally, I wasn't feeling the best at 5pm as opposed to 2.30. I did prepare quite a bit for this exam. I felt I did all right, but I ended up missing the last question - 10 marks worth out of 100."
Because of that Chalaev might re-sit the exam, despite having to fit it in around work.
"It's something I'm considering doing because even though I felt confident going into the exam my performance, I felt, was a bit impeded because of that lag.
"I think I could still do better, even if I have to put myself through that three hours of a torturous accounting exam again."
He also raised issues of fairness if some students sat exams as open book tests, with no monitoring, while others didn't.
'This isn't an isolated incident'
Te Tira Ahu Pae student association distance vice president Flynn O'Hallahan said the short-term fix of halting online supervised exams was good.
But, students were still working through problems, such as rescheduling, and it was not yet clear exactly how many were affected.
The colleges of business and science mostly used online supervised exams, and they had 9500 students, so it could be a high number, he said.
The university now had to look to the future.
"We're calling for them to re-evaluate how many courses are using their OSEs, which are more supervised, as opposed to the TCA [time-constrained assessment]-style of examination, which is more open book.
"We're calling for in-person exams to be returned as an option alongside OSEs, and different software for OSEs."
The association has had students tell it they want to change universities because of online supervised exams, while others feel stuck as they were unable to change, O'Hallahan said.
"This isn't an isolated incident. We've been approaching Massey for the past year over our concerns with OSEs, because there have been technical issues in the past.
"This is the most extensive issue, but we've been warning things like this could happen and we haven't really been taken seriously, and now we're seeing the result of that."
O'Hallahan said Massey didn ot want to return to in-person exams due to costs and it had put profit before people.
Massey University said no one was available for an interview on Thursday.
A spokeswoman said it was an evolving and complex situation and it was prioritising communications to students and staff.
In a statement on Wednesday Massey said it was extremely disappointed in this failure of service.
