Observations of Remote and In-Persons Formats Using Partial Credit and Multiple-Choice Exams

This paper explores observations of grade performance across six cohorts of students in the same course that experienced different exam formats, in-person and remote testing, and instructional techniques.Our objective was to explore how these factors influence student performance and provide insight to inform future course and exam development.A surprising finding is that the cohort of students that experienced a transition mid-semester to remote learning and testing format performed significantly better than other cohorts.However, transitioning to multiple-choice testing formats instead of long-form, rubric based questions with partial credit showed a return to typical behavior.There were statistically significant differences in in-person and remote testing for both multiple choice exams and long form partial credit exams, indicating that these are not perfectly equivalent assessment metrics.