The Experience of Tests during the COVID-19 Pandemic-Induced Emergency Remote Teaching

The dire circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a severely debilitating global impact on education, and led to an urgent transition from the onsite environment (OSE) to the online environment (OLE) for teaching and learning. In that regard, this paper describes the experiences of us and students of our involvement in oral and written tests in multiple software engineering-related courses during 2020 and 2021. The challenges encountered along with the interventions are discussed, and educational lessons based on the reactions and responses of the students are given. The results of a preliminary survey of the students of their learning experience in the OLE are presented and, related to it, the comments from the students highlighting their preferences of the OSE or the OLE are included. The test procedures, processes, and/or practices herein are, in principle, generalizable and potentially applicable to other courses in computer science or software engineering, during emergency remote teaching or even otherwise.