You need to hear about the debacle that was my first Calculus IV exam of the semester.
First of all, my professor decided a while ago that he wanted to have us take proctored online exams because he thought it would be easier for the students to take, we'd get instant feedback on our grades, and it would save on a TON of paper and time on grading for the TA's. It was to be through a website called WeBWorK, the one many math professors use for their students to acquire and submit the answers to their homework problems for a grade. But that's just what the website it: a problem. It frequently crashes at the worst possible times, especially when students are trying to get their homework done before the due dates. So obviously, this is a sign that one of the three EXAMS, which weigh heavier on your overall grade than homework does, for the class should NOT be taken on a malfunctioning website.
The night of the scheduled exam, all of the students were assigned to different labs across campus since the exam had to be taken on a computer with a proctor overseeing that cheating didn't occur. I was unlucky enough to be in South Kedzie's lab, while some of my other friends from Wilson only had to go to Case Hall, right next door to us.
So I biked over to Kedzie pretty early since I was really prepared for this test, and found the lab in a maze of hallways and offices. I sat down, logged in to WeBWorK, and got ready for the proctor to give us the signal to start. As 5:30pm rolled around, or proctor as well as about ten or twelve others, allowed their students to start the exam, and guess what happens when 400+ students try to log on to a faulty website at one time? It's going to crash, duh. Three students from my section were able to get in and begin the exam, but the rest of us stared at the login screen and the progress bar on the bottom of the browser window. We waited patiently for about 20-30 minutes before our proctor called our professor, who proceeded to tell us to shut down the log in pages because he was going to open up each lab section individually.This seemed like a pretty good idea until about 6:30pm when our exam still wasn't open and the exam would be closed in an hour. So after another phone call, we were told our exams had been canceled and a solution would be devised and we would be notified later in the evening.
Now, I was already pretty upset because I was so well prepared for this exam and then we couldn't take it at our scheduled time. Plus, I had oodles of homework to finish and it just had felt like I completed wasted two hours of life. Let's just say I was rather frustrated for the rest of the day.
The solution our professor came up with made it all better, though. He initially wanted us to take paper exams the following week's recitation (8 days after the scheduled exam!), but I believe many students emailed him expressing their concern for learning a week's worth of new material before being tested on the old stuff. He then proposed to make the exam the following day during recitation, but then assumed that students who wouldn't read their email between then and exam time would not be prepared to take the exam in a shorter amount of time (a 50 minute recitation instead of a 2 hour exam). His final decision was his best, and our favorite, choice. He made the exam available on WeBWorK to be taken, unproctored, any time from late Wednesday night until tonight (Sunday) at 11:59 pm. It would be our responsibilities to follow the MSU Engineering Code Of Conduct and respect the Academic Honesty Policy. I was so amped up for the exam already, that I just decided to get it over with that night. It took me about 30 minutes and I aced it after 3 attempts (we're only allowed 4 grade submissions before that becomes your final grade.)
I was just so happy to be done with that exam that I celebrated by going to bed at a decent hour instead of doing any more homework. :] Hopefully this will not happen again this semester, it was way to stressful to deal with in one night!
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