The sudden remote teaching during the pandemic followed by the use of AI throughout the society has made universities and teachers reflect on their assessment methods and practices. At our university, there have been emphasized needs for new kinds of invigilated assessment events. In addition to traditional exams with pen on paper, versatile electronic exam setups have been developed. The needs for equality, trust and fairness when assessing students’ submission against different forms of possible fraud has increased the pressure for using electronic assessment and has also been the starting point of this study.

Our study focused on the electronic final exam at the end of a university-level basic programming course. The aim for the study was to deepen understanding on how a gamified setup with instant feedback, score points and opportunity for retries would support students in presenting their skills during the exam. In the study, we investigated students’ different choices of actions during the exam and their expressed experiences, as well as their exam results.

Prior to the final exam, students had done course exercises which were pre-requisite for participating in the exam. The exercises were automatically assessed programming exercises with automatic feedback and resubmitting opportunity. This kind of gamified element was planned to encourage and motivate students to practice and learn. To align the assessment methods during the course, some of the exam assignments followed the same gamified principles with instant feedback and points as well as opportunity to retry and resubmit.

The final exam was implemented in an exam studio setup at the university campus, combined with the same learning platform which students had already used during the course. In addition to the exam assignments, students had the opportunity to give open-ended feedback in the exam. The data set included both quantitative and qualitative data; the exam assignment points and timestamps as well as points from the course exercises, and students’ exam feedback data. The data was collected during 2020-2022, including 1987 exercise attempts, 2003 exam attempts, and 1404 exam feedback submissions. The quantitative data were statistically analyzed and feedback responses content-based categorized.

The results indicate that the assessment of students’ skills benefited from the exam setup. Students who were aware of the approaching end of time were able to benefit from the feedback and acted effectively to answer the exam questions. But students who seemed immersed by the gamified setup stayed for too long with the first assignments, did not proceed but instead used time for finetuning their already acceptable answers and thus were short of time. The feedback students gave on the exam showed that the exam was a meaningful way to take a programming course exam, and still, students with higher exam grades perceived the exam setup as more suitable than students with low passed or failed exam grades. The provided exam setup allowed students’ efficient behavior, but did not emphasize, guide or require students to act in such a way. It seems that the gamified setup could even be disturbing for some students. Based on the results, this kind of gamified and encouraging exam setup is recommendable but should be filled in with a total exam points scoreboard to emphasize the requirements for passing the exam.

Keywords: Higher education, programming course, electronic exam, gamification.