Starting autumn term 2015, exams at the Faculty of Engineering will be written anonymously. Student names will be replaced with number combinations.
The Faculty of Engineering, LTH, introduces anonymous exams. Instead of names, technologists will now have numbers. Starting autumn term 2015, all students will be given unique numbers to follow them throughout their jungle of exams.
Photo: Press/LTH student union.
The decision follows the principle of objectivity and is a natural next step in the academic community. LTH is just one of several departments reaching this decision, and it looks like students will have to get used to scribbling down numbers instead of names in the future.
Alexander Theofanous, Vice President and responsible for education at the student union at LTH, is positive to the changes.
“We have been pushing towards this for a long time. We have seen other faculties do it and realised how important it was. Both students and teachers need to be assured that all evaluations are done objectively.”
LTH late to the show
But is has not been an overnight change. Uppsala University was in the front line of student anonymity already in 2010 when the system was implemented. Four years later, LTH has arrived for the show.
“LTH is a large faculty with many wills and several problems. Anonymous exams have not been prioritised enough by the management. Over a year ago, we took the initiative by pushing even harder on LTH:s management than before. If you make enough noise it usually goes your way eventually,” Alexander Theofanous says.
Elisabeth Nilsson, Director of studies at LTH, also likes the anonymous exams. But she does not like how long it took for the change to happen.
“It´s an excellent system that should have been in place already. Of course everyone correcting exams need administrative support.”
Students turning into numbers
Replacing student names with numbers is a change in the less personal direction. But Alexander Theofanous believes that the goal justifies the means:
“There will be some more administration for students and the department. Students will have to remember a code, and the department will have some additional work to do. But this is a price worth paying – the trade-off is great.”
Have exams been evaluated subjectively at LTH?
“It´s not a huge problem that we´ve encountered a lot – but it has happened. Single cases do show up wherein two students have written alike, but are still evaluated differently. There are such cases, and there might be cases of which we are not yet aware. We are eliminating a risk of unfair evaluation through this decision,” says Alexander Theofanous.
Text: Casper Danielsson
Translation: Carl-William Ersgård
First published at lundagard.se
