Dear Sir/Madam,

I hope this message finds you well; I am writing this regarding the format of our upcoming Microeconomic exam and the common consensus amongst my fellow students is that there is a high level of dissatisfaction and worry. I wanted to state a few reasons as to why this is the case.

Firstly, despite being informed about the format of the examination from week 1, we were not given any support to give us confidence in completing in-person exams. The majority of the cohort has not sat an in-person exam since our GCSEs, which was over three years ago. We all believe that, since we were asked to give our feedback on the module, we should be given the final say on how we want the format of our exams to be since this will correctly reflect our potential and not unfairly disadvantage us. We must consider that we have been disrupted by Covid-19 and so the format in which we do the exams must be consistent as Covid-19 still exists. There is no good reason for exams to be in person anymore since we have all been affected by the pandemic and even employers have started adjusting to this change.

The lack of support and resources provided for this module has led to great uncertainty about how we feel about our final performance in the module. The lecture materials are heavily theory based and do not provide enough mathematical examples. Furthermore, the tutorial solutions fail to explain or even show how to reach the correct solution which further creates confusion. When this matter was brought up in a tutorial, we were bluntly told that these solutions have been like this for the past few years so it is unlikely for any change. This is extremely concerning. Similarly, the practice/past coursework set given is extremely unsatisfactory as it does not help students prepare for their own coursework. Despite the questions, we were not given the solution which is rather absurd as we were unsure whether we had the correct answers. This uncertainty created has had an impact on the mental health of the students which will only further ensure that we will underperform at the in-person exam, and I am sure that the Microeconomics office does not want to negatively impact the academic performance of its students unfairly.

The university must carefully consider our feedback as we students will be the ones who will be greatly affected by this decision. Shouldn’t the DPE themselves be facilitating for students the best possible ways for them to ensure they excel academically? We all believe that online exams are the best possible outcome. To the best of our knowledge, in employment, we will not be taking exams under exam conditions with invigilators since we will be given resources and will be asking for assistance from fellow colleagues. Creating a scenario (in-person exams) which is very unrepresentative of the real world and is detrimental to our grades seems like an absolute disservice from DPE who are only meant to support us.

With weekly quizzes being our only way to practise questions, these are multiple choices which do not reflect the real exam. Furthermore, we do not have any mock exams, unlike other universities in London, to help us transition into face-face exams so the expectation of students performing well is unjustified. 

Not only is the way we are being assessed giving us less confidence but the way in which online exams are being held is also changing. This only further disadvantages us since we have already completed first year exams in a format best suited to us as we conducted the majority of our further studies online. We feel that since we started with online exams it would only be fair and wise to have us complete our degree being fully examined online as we have not had in person exams since 2019. This poor decision may not affect the university in any way other than improving its reputation, however, these degrees will stay with us for life and every job we apply to, every industry we enter, every interview we attend to, every assessment centre we go to, the outcome of our degree will affect our employability and essentially our lives. 

We collectively as students have had to take up a large portion of our time to express how the exam format is not suitable for our cohort considering the fact that the majority of us have not done an in-person exam in over 4 years! Especially when it’s worth 90% of our total mark.

We as students strongly believe this must be reconsidered by DPE since we are all strongly dissatisfied with how our feedback was brushed aside. We do not want to be disadvantaged in the already incredibly difficult Job market and this disservice is far from what King’s College London is supposedly meant to stand for (facilitating an adequate education whilst giving students excellent job prospects).

There are many career choices which involve online exams to progress in the industries. For accountancy, the CFA exams are online for actuary, the IFoA exams can be completed online and for jobs to do with computer science and software engineering, all of the work is done online and even to be considered for a job, we have to complete Situational and Competency tests to see if the applicant is hireable or not. In today’s world, it just wouldn’t make sense to still have in person exams and especially to attempt to transition students who haven’t had an in person exam for 5 years to suddenly prepare to take in person exams with a few mocks and other pointless exemptions.

I believe King’s College London should take some responsibility for the extra stress, pressure and time taken for students to express their concerns as a result of the lack of organisation, clarity and certainty displayed, by rightfully giving us online examinations with a 24-hour window in which we are comfortable. This will give us less time to worry about the exam format and more time to properly revise and understand the exam content.

As a student at a university considered to be one of the best globally, listening to what students have to say and acting on it should be normal, however, we feel that by making us transition to in person exams, we have been let down by the faculty and this correctable mistake will have a negative impact on our careers and the consequences of this mistake will be a burden to students for life.

Here is a petition list of students who share this same opinion.

I hope our points were very clear and I would greatly appreciate it if you will thoroughly consider them. Please do inform me of any questions you may have regarding this topic. I hope to hear back from you.