The Linguist

18 The Linguist Vol/62 No/3 FEATURES Which Covid-related changes have language departments kept and are they any better for it, asks James Hughes When I began my undergraduate languages degree at Oxford in 2019 and the books quickly piled up, I started to wonder how I would manage to memorise enough quotes to deploy in my exams. Four years and one pandemic later, I was confronted by a quite different reality in this summer's exams: online, open-book assessments for my literature papers. No need for extensive memorisation – this was between me, my notes and my laptop's search function. While the pandemic forced universities' hands in many respects, moving teaching, assessment and student support online, I was curious to see how these changes were viewed now. Are traditional modes of academic assessment on the way out? Or is going digital not always the answer? Were Covid-induced measures appropriate only for their own unique circumstances, or have they catalysed welcome innovations that might have otherwise struggled to gain traction? We surveyed four UK universities (Birmingham, Cardiff, Nottingham and Sheffield Hallam) to find out which pandemic measures seem here to stay and why. Examinations and assessments Three of the four participating universities agreed that, to some extent, their methods of assessment have improved following measures taken due to the pandemic, with only one querying whether these changes amounted to a clear-cut improvement. At the same time, all four universities have rolled back some of the changes made to assessments. This reflects a general diversification of examination modes in the post-pandemic landscape. We should seek to understand why universities are generally moving away from the in-person, handwritten forms of assessment with which we are familiar. While revising for my own exams this year, I was surprised to learn from a study skills lecturer that the type of pen used in an exam could impact my writing speed by approximately 10% – a good few hundred words, perhaps an extra paragraph, in some exams. It seems that the pandemic has benefitted students and examiners by removing handwriting speed (and its usual victim in exams: legibility) as a key factor in academic performance. Online assessment modes enable students to make edits without turning their exam script into a piece of abstract work, while also facilitating proofreading. For university staff, online submissions typically make for a smoother and more manageable marking process, with one respondent noting that while online submission and marking had always been an aspiration, it took Covid-related developments to make this an achievable norm. Correspondingly, universities now exhibit a greater reliance on online assessment, in Universities: the new normal some cases dispensing entirely with traditional, hall-based exams for non-language papers. Essay-based exams are now less likely to be assessed in a Countdown-style race against the clock, or involve the tricky business of manually counting whether your submission falls within the word limit. Instead, these universities are favouring methods such as coursework, in-class tests and presentations. Language and translation exams constitute an exception in this respect. These have returned to the in-person format in order to assess spontaneous language production and accuracy independently of physical and online translation resources. At Cardiff University, for instance, non-language modules are now assessed by coursework, while language modules are assessed under invigilation. In- person exams are, of course, not incompatible with typed submission, and the cumulative benefits of tidier and revised student copies, alongside easier submission and marking, may see more universities invest in this area. Restoring a number of exams to the traditional, in-person format is arguably a welcome move. Sitting such exams with one's peers is something of a rite of passage, one that can feel particularly significant for cohorts whose university experience has involved rather more time confined to our bedrooms than we would have liked. I certainly felt a sense of grim solidarity with my peers,

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