Effects of Online Testing on Student Exam Performance and Test Anxiety

Increased use of course management software to administer course exams online for face-to-face classes raises the question of how well test anxiety and other emotions generalize from the classroom to an online setting. We hypothesized that administering regular course exams in an online format would reduce test anxiety experienced at the time of the exam and improve exam scores. We recruited 69 participants from a psychology course to take classroom- and online-delivered exams, using a counterbalanced crossover design. We found that students who normally experience high levels of test anxiety in the classroom had reduced test anxiety when taking online exams, while the reverse was true for those low in classroom anxiety. Furthermore, the relationship between test anxiety and exam performance was weaker in an online setting than in the classroom. We recommend that instructors evaluate the potential impact of these findings when considering offering examinations online.