Students at the University of South Africa (Unisa) have finished off their exams for the second semester of 2021 and the school has some feedback about the process.
Unisa is a distance education institution but exams were traditionally still written in person for the sake of controlling the environment. This changed last year because of the pandemic when exams were moved online, a fixture that was made permanent.
As Unisa continues to improve the systems in place for home online exams, it has instituted the use of “invigilation tools” in the form of the Invigilator App and IRIS. These pieces of software work in conjunction to monitor students and make sure that no irregularities occur when writing their papers.
This year 1.4 million online summative assessments were completed by Unisa students, so the software had its work cut out for it. In an announcement Unisa admits that some problems arose on its end in the form of the software not working as intended and / or backend issues which the school calls “server challenges”.
But Unisa is more concerned with the students themselves instead of anything on the software side of things.
“We have noted that some students do not read university communication, particularly in preparing themselves for online examinations. Such students found themselves unable to activate the Invigilation App and did not send their queries to the Invigilator WhatsApp line as instructed. While we accommodated students’ queries and responded accordingly, the university relies on the tracking and tracing mechanism of the Invigilator WhatsApp line to investigate the reported queries,” an announcement reads.
“Because students did not make full use of the Invigilator WhatsApp line, we recognise that we may not have identified all the students who were granted permission not to use the Invigilator App and their results have been withheld. Students who fall into this category have an opportunity to appeal the university’s decision through completion of the form. Click here to access the online form. Students are expected to attach proof of such permission.”
Several other concessions were surrendered by Unisa. During the latest round of loadshedding students found themselves unable to write exams. Those affected could apply for aegrotat papers which are written at a later date, and the university received an unexpectedly large wave of these.
All currently enrolled students are recommended to read the latest feedback from the university about their exams available here, especially if something happened during the exam process that may have resulted in less than positive. Many instances of errors will be met with marks being withheld, so it’s worth checking out before going into the holidays.
