Online Exam during COVID-19 0utbreaks

As we know, the Covid-19 pandemic has made students unable to return to schools and sit their examinations as normal. As consequences, many schools resorted to online exams. Like other schools, Darul Hikam Integrated School – Secondary also held online exam. This exam was held on 7 December until 14 December 2020.  Unlike our midterm-test (project-based assessment) which focused on developing 21st-century skills, our final exams concentrated on checking students’ understanding of the given competencies (cognitive skills) in this semester.

In this exam, students were given a set of questions. They have to work on the given questions consisting of 10 multiple choice questions and 3-5 essays questions with a specified time of 60-90 minutes. Why do we give them only a few questions? After careful evaluation of last semester exams, we have come to a conclusion that 10 multiple choice questions and 3 – 5 essays would be enough for online exams.

Yes, we have reduced the number of multiple-choice questions, but we changed the difficulty level of questions. In this case, we referred to the AKM (Asesmen Kompetensi Minimum) or UTBK questions. This has to be done so that our students will be familiar with these questions. We also put out the essay questions to see the students’ thinking/analysis. To make sure our online exam run well, students are required to fill out an integrity pact that contains rules that students must obey during the exam.

The online test was conducted using a website developed by Darul Hikam foundation which is devoted to our school, namely sisfo.dhis.ac.id. After doing a lot of trials in the previous semester and making some adjustments in this semester, alhamdulillah the online exam, this semester went well though many features are still being developed. Our hope that in the near future parents will have direct access to check their children’ academic progress through this website.

Alhamdulillah, the final exams for this semester went quite well, even though there were some insignificant obstacles that had occurred. Such obstacles have become notes for us so that we can improve our online exam in the future.

by Surya Wiranto Jati