One of the most used approaches for online student assessment in Greek polytechnic schools and specifically in NTUA is the “Take Home Exam”. The students receive in their email a link to Webex or MS Teams with the date and time of the exam. At the time of the exam, students should first authenticate themselves by logging into one of these two video conference platforms via the link, opening their cameras and showing their identity cards. After the authentication process ends for all students, professors upload the exam in pdf format on an online learning management system used by the university (MyCourses or Helios). The students download the assessment, answer the questions digitally or in handwriting and upload it back using their student credentials. The duration of the assessment is specific and when the time expires, students can no longer upload their answers. During the examination, students should keep their cameras open and can ask the professor any question they may have.
Apart from pdf documents, professors in NTUA also use online quizzes. They prepare a pool of questions and a subset of them is randomly presented to each student. Some professors give students the option to go back and forward in questions while others choose the questions to be presented in a sequential way and for a specific time.
However, many professors claim that interview is the most accurate method to assess students. For large classrooms (300 members) this approach may seem inefficient but for smaller groups is considered effective. Interviews are often used as a complement filter for the first approach to ensure the fairness of the good performance of some students in the written exams.
