In pandemic, Fudan University admits international students to its undergraduate programs via virtual tests. Challenges exist but experience is gained.
As the reputation of Fudan University grows, it has become one of the most popular universities to study in China among international students and the first choice of many if they want to study in Shanghai, a global city that offers a multi-faceted experience.
To select the best from a large pool of applicants from around the world, 16 years ago, Fudan University held the first entrance exam for international applicants. Since then, the entrance exam has become the most important part of the international student admissions process at Fudan University.
This year, the entrance exam for international applicants, which took place on May 8-9, for the first time, went virtual.
Fudan holds preparatory meetings for the live-proctored exam.
Photo by Zhang Xiangrong
The exam was originally planned for early March, but were postponed due to the pandemic. After weeks of deliberation, the Fudan International Students Office decided that if the admission happens at all, the entrance exam shall be in place to maintain meritocracy.
In fact, Fudan University is one of the first universities in China to move online their entrance exams for international students.
In normal times, students applying for an undergraduate program at Fudan University need to take at least 3 tests. Those applying for humanities programs will be tested on Chinese, Maths and English, while those applying for sciences and medicine programs will take one more test in any one among Physics, Chemistry or Life Sciences, in a way very similar to China’s National College Entrance Exam, or Gaokao for domestic students.
Since this spring semester, global academic administrators have found it difficult to come up with a good solution to supplement what’s lost in traditional classrooms. Exam supervision, in particular, has posed a great challenge.
During an online exam, the common devices adopted usually include a computer for a test-taker to type in answers and a web camera to film his or her behavior throughout the test session.
A cellphone? Maybe not. Sounds a bit shady. But for this year’s entrance exams for international applicants at Fudan University, cellphone is a required device.
A proctor supervises test-takers at a computer.
Photo by Zhang Xiangrong
“Before the exam, we asked the test-takers to check if the following functions work on their cellphones. First, photo taking. The candidates needed to take photos of their answers to essay questions and upload them to the online exam system. Second, contact for tech support. If anything wrong happened to their devices or the online exam system, they could call for support immediately. Third, receiving calls from proctors. Proctors would make a call to inquire candidates whose behavior they deemed might have violated the exam rules. If a violation was confirmed, proctors could disqualify the candidate immediately,” said a staffer at Fudan International Students Office.
“We believe most candidates have completed the exam solely on their own. But it was also important for us to take preventive measures using technologies,” explained the staffer.
For each test, several proctors were appointed and each would supervise a group of test-takers. The online proctoring system would show 4 test-takers on the screen at a time, and after a set interval, it would switch to the next 4 test-takers. The university also asked the provider of the proctoring system to add a function which allowed proctors to pin the image of test-takers who would require extra attention to the front.
Two practice sessions were held in advance for both the test-takers and the proctors to familiarize themselves with the proctoring system.
But still the system could act silly sometimes. For example, it would constantly alert the proctors to detection of seeming mismatch between test-takers and their photos submitted when they registered for the exam, while a human proctor could easily find the alerted “mismatch” was just a misreading of the system. There were also times when test-takers unconsciously leaned the side of their heads against their arms and the system assumed that they were making a phone call and sent false alarms. So still the human proctors had to step in and rule on the action.
Online interviews are held after the written exam.
Photo by Zhang Xiangrong
When grading papers from the exam, a teacher observed multiple fonts in an essay and realized that the test-taker was likely to have copied and pasted content from elsewhere. For violations as such, applicants would be disqualified. Tools were also used to check plagiarism. In addition, the university conducted online interviews to further test the applicants face-to-face.
“After holding this year’s entrance exam online, we are more prepared for what may come in the future. This experience certainly provides us with an important option,” said a staffer at Fudan International Students Office.
In previous years, Fudan’s entrance exams for international applicants were held in 3 cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul. Though holding exams online can save venue costs and travel expenses, the university decides it will still go for offline exams next year, if the situation allows.
Source: Shanghai Observer
Editor: Deng Jianguo
