Returning to prepandemic assessments?

Epigramspeaks to lecturers and students about the government's bill to impose minimum service levels on key industries.

Nel Roden Second Year English

With the disruptions of the pandemic now seemingly a thing of the past, universities across the country are undergoing a gradual reintroduction to in-person exams. While it marks a firm return to a preCOVID education experience, how is the University of Bristol conducting its return to combined assessments?

Epigram spoke to students and lecturers regarding the benefits and drawbacks of in-person exams.

Writing for Times Higher Education, university invigilator Helen Soteriou argued that online exams were a‘grave mistake’ and that the ‘playing field is very unequal’ when students are able to complete their assessments at home. In contrast, Andrew Quentin— researcher for Assessments & Qualifications Insight—alternatively suggested that open-book exams, which are now largely conducted remotely, ‘could encourage more creative and critical thinking.'

However, a systematic review by the National Library of Medicine (NIH) found that ‘there does not appear to be sufficient evidence for exclusively using CBE [closed-book examinations] or OBE [open-book examinations].’ The researchers concluded that ‘a combined approach could become a more significant part of testing protocols’, suggesting that in order for institutions to gain a comprehensive idea of students’ abilities, they should be utilising both openbook and in-person assessments.

Wendy Carlos

'Behind the lens'

While research suggests a combination of exam formats is the most effective assessment method, the pressure felt by students when returning to what is now an unfamiliar in-person exam format should not be overlooked.

A poll conducted by Epigram found that 37 per cent of responding students returned to in-person exams this year, with an overwhelming 88 per cent expressing a preference for remote, open-book assessments. For many first year’s at Bristol, the January exam period will have been their first encounter with in-person exams since their GCSEs. Epigram spoke to a first year Biology student, whose in-lab practical exam and accompanying written paper was his first formal assessment since 2019.

'[T]here is an understanding amongst the academic community that varied assessments are an integral part of a postpandemic education.

The student was apprehensive, explaining that, ‘it was unlike anything I’d done before. I was extremely nervous going into it.' He stated that there was a general feeling of being ‘rusty and out of practice having not felt the pressure of an in-person environment in a while.' assessment are an integral part of a post-pandemic higher education.

Speaking to Epigram, Professor Innes Cuthill, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the School of Biological Sciences, said that the department’s decision to return to in-person exams was ‘to avoid the large-scale collusion and googling of answers which happened when the assessments were run online in 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. He explained that ‘honest students were being disadvantaged.’ For STEM subjects, assessing the retention of quantifiable information is key in tracking students’ progression. However, Professor Cuthill noted that within the Biology department the only in-person timed assessments of this nature are completed in first year, where the marks do not contribute to the final degree classification. ‘Timed assessments that make up the rest of the marks in years two and three are now all done remotely’, which he believes enables the assessment

An Epigram poll found that 88 per cent of respondents preferred remote, openbook assessments to better judge the students’ ‘understanding and original thought.'

Professor Cuthill stated that the department’s reasons for conducting its timed assessments remotely included the convenience of having type-written exam scripts for examiners, and issues regarding reserving space in exam-halls.

Despite his unease, he favours inperson assessments when it comes to practical examinations. Given that the type of assessment varies by subject, he stated that there is an understanding amongst the academic community that varied forms of

This LGBTQ+ History Month, Epigram celebrates LGBTQ+ people's contributions to the production of cinema 'behind the lens'.

Charlie Graff MPhil English

Have you heard of Wendy Carlos? Carlos’ 16-bit compatible website describes her as ‘one of the most important composers living today.’ In interviews, Carlos prefers to describe herself as just being ‘there at the right time.' custom synths and user manuals as well as helping to develop Dolby digital sound remastering. This is just a short list of her achievements.

While studying at Columbia in the late 1960s, she worked with Robert Moog to develop one of the first commercially available synthesisers, the Moog synthesiser, and turned it into an international sensation with her 1968 album Switched-On Bach.

At the time, the synthesiser was seen as either a sci-fi effects machine or a tool for academics. To use it to develop a whole album for a mainstream audience was practically unheard of. The sound was strange and the machine was labour-intensive; each individual note had to be hand-crafted, meaning it could take hundreds of hours to produce just a minute of music.

Carlos’ work comes from a place of curiosity and dedication. She wasn’t interested in boundaries or classifications, and describes herself as an ‘omnivore’. For her, creation was about learning, openness and conveying an inner thing into the outer world. It was this—and a lot of hard work—that allowed her to create so many of the tools and techniques that almost all contemporary music relies on. Where there was no technology to make what she imagined, she made the technology.

Nonetheless, the world she helped to build did not share her

Examinations in the Schools of Arts and Humanities are still largely conducted remotely as openbook, timed assessments, although departments such as English primarily assess through coursework to better test ‘original thought.'

Epigram spoke to a secondyear English student, who felt that coursework assessments are ‘best suited for the degree, as the answers are not really something you can just Google.’

She continued, ‘I’m aware that the department have used inperson exams in the past, but I think COVID caused a necessary reshuffle that’s stuck’, emphasising how the provisions made during the pandemic catalysed the departments’ reappraisal of their examination format.

While the University of Bristol continues to conduct in-person assessments across a range of degree subjects, the continuation of remote assessments following the pandemic points to their favourable nature.

Switched-On Bach won three Grammy Awards and was the first classical music album in history to go platinum. It inspired a generation of artists to embrace the Moog synthesiser: Parliament-Funkadelic, The Grateful Dead, The Beatles, every 70s prog-rock band, they all owe influence to Carlos’ work.

But Switched-On Bach was just the beginning. Carlos went on to invent ambient music with her 1972 Sonic Seasonings, released six years before Brian Eno’s Ambient 1. She revolutionised film composition with her otherworldly soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980), Tron (1982) and Woundings (1998). She created numerous characteristic openness. Until the age of forty, she was forced to maintain a professional alias under her deadname. She rarely performed live and made her few public appearances in masculine dress.

When she came out in a 1979 Playboy article, the magazine dedicated two columns to her music while the other fifteen pages were devoted to invasive questions about her surgery.

Most of the music she created for Kubrick’s films was never used and couldn’t be released as Warner held the rights to it.

Even the classical music world, which she helped to save from the academic insularity of the late 60s, failed to reciprocate her kindness. She gave the modern world some of its greatest gifts from the same place she often had to hide from it: her home studio in New York.

Carlos disappeared from the public eye in 2009. In a blog post about her ‘Wurly II’, a custom synth she was designing in the 2000s, she describes the project as ‘a constructive way to retain some sanity in an increasingly insane and dangerous country and world.’

Somewhere out there, she is still working, even if the public has squandered the privilege of hearing about it.