On Conducting Tests in Software Engineering Courses during the COVID-19 Pandemic (S)

Abstract

The circumstances presented by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a severely debilitating impact on education, in general, and software engineering education, in particular. This paper describes the author's experience over three semesters in conducting oral and written tests in six software engineering-related courses with around 500 students overall. The technical as well as non-technical challenges encountered are discussed, and educational lessons based on the reactions and responses of students are given. The proposed concepts, decisions, and processes herein are effectively generalizable and potentially applicable to other types of courses and to (not necessarily pandemic-related) online teaching-related situations in general.