Emotions Experienced by Students Taking Online and Classroom Quizzes

Abstract

Emotions experienced during online academic examinations may differ from emotions experienced in the traditional classroom testing situation. Students in a Psychology of Learning course ( n = 61) completed assessments of emotions before and after a quiz in each of the following settings: online at their own choice of time and location; online in a library computer lab at a fixed time; and in the regular classroom setting. Students low in classroom test anxiety had significantly higher test anxiety levels when taking a quiz online, whereas students who experienced high levels of anxiety in the classroom had similarly high levels of test anxiety across all conditions. Notably, the correlation between test anxiety and performance was weaker in the online conditions than in the classroom condition. Furthermore, the online assessment of student learning may be accompanied by significant changes in emotion.