This email is written on behalf of all the students who took SBM courses in the previous semester who signed the attached petition.

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

One only word to sum up the recently ended exam: disastrous. Examination misconduct, academic integrity, exam arrangements, assessment method, to name but a few, have made many of us outrageous and helpless. All these problems have been well-anticipated prior to the final exam but no compensating actions were made by the school. This email serves as the final urge to the School of Business and Management to remedy the impact posed on the students owed to all arrangements made regarding the Fall 2019 final exam.

We would start our statement with some vital problems we faced.

First, the loose regulation on academic integrity. The main and arguably only way adopted to supervise examination integrity was Zoom system, which has found to be very ineffective. Not only is Zoom meeting unable to monitor online communication within students, some even sought for others to finish the exam on their behalves since Zoom meeting cannot trace the actual doer of the exam. Cheating became very common and was practiced by most of the students on a different extent. Some exams such as that of ECON 2123 did not even require students to use Zoom during the exam. In addition, some of us saw other students in their Zoom camera that other people were also present in their online exam venue. The impact of exam dishonesty is obvious, we decide not to spend effort mentioning here.

Then again, we do not think the student body should share most of the blame. Many students are facing huge concerns especially on major selection, where a disadvantageous final exam may cost them to lose their desired majors. Cease of scholarship, employment disadvantages are also our major concerns, whilst we would have been literally punished by being honest, knowing that many were planning to take unallowed advantages. While complaining to the school had not been impactful, a blatant result was that most of us could do nothing but to cheat as well: a dystopia-like scenario. Mind you, we are not denying the fact that students should behold academic integrity, we are instead trying to point out that the school shares equal responsibility to maintain a healthy environment for a fair assessment of students’ ability. With that said, the school has the obligation to incentivize the students to act appropriately. Unfortunately, it had not been the case.

Furthermore, we would also like to cast doubt on the capability of determining students’ ability of the assessments. It is noticed that the given time of many exams is trimmed, probably to minimize the opportunity to communicate. An unusual number of students were unable to complete the exam within the given time. The designation of the exam paper meant to comprehensively assess our knowledge on all components of the course while being able to distinguish students of different levels. The exam will lose its desired purpose if students are provided Insufficient time to finish the paper (or only the top performers can be identified). Also, some exams such as that of ISOM 2700 did not even allow students to rewind the previous questions: a highly questionable arrangement in a way that students are not allowed to manage their time properly. Choices were put forth to students between giving up the points or figuring out the solution WHENEVER they were stuck. Students’ performance will be heavily affected. It creates the same problem that students’ abilities cannot be measured in an objective and variation-free manner. In the final exam of ACCT 2010, all questions are delivered in multiple choices, and its effectiveness to measure students’ accounting knowledge is highly doubted in an application-based discipline.

Lastly, we want to voice out for the unlucky ones who suffered from unexpected situations. Few of us faced internet disconnection, computer system failure, etc. during the exam. These had affected their performance significantly despite these cases were comparatively not common. In FINA 2303, a proportion of students received mark penalty on failing to meet all the rules with the Zoom in the trial quiz, the trial quiz, sarcastically, was to help students familiarizing the examination system and students were penalized in spite of this.

Some may argue that these arrangements or problems are universal to all students who sat for the exam; therefore, it was a fair one. Nevertheless, if the exam is problematic in its nature, it only means that students have to face unwanted additional factors that pose an unparallel impact on our performances.

In view of the mentioned problems, the exam loses its ability to determine students’ learning outcome, the effect eventually goes to students’ grades. When the grades remain questionable in demonstrating students’ academic capability, it loses its legitimacy to represent students in multiple scenarios, such as distributing academic honour and awards. We would like to emphasize that grades issued by the school are legitimized by the recognized professionalism of HKUST, of which has been built with the best endeavour by both students and the teaching staff in more than two decades. Nobody would want to see it being criticized or questioned.

Therefore, we demand the following made-up arrangements:

1.     Allow students to declare P/F on courses on a case-by-case basis, the school should approve the request if the student provides proof that 1) the exam fails to allow him/her to demonstrate his/her ability, 2) his/she has been heavily affected, mentally or physically by the recent social unrest.

2.     Provide options for students who find themselves disadvantageous due to the exam arrangements to apply for a make-up exam. Courses should provide the option when a notable number of students make such requests.

3.     Extent the maximum quota of each major to assure students with mild disadvantages in the examination can declare their desired majors

4.     Specify courses with alternative examination arrangements to alert employers/postgraduate institutions that the course grade may be biased

This is certainly not the first time that we raised complaints on the exam. The ignorance of SBM, though, has provoked the student body. Therefore, we decide to set a deadline for response. The deadline is set on 30th December 2019, two days before the deadline for Major Selection Exercise. If the school fails to provide a commonly acceptable response to the student body, we shall deliver an email attached with all collected evidence associated with the aforementioned problems to all main corporates, banks and financial institutions in Hong Kong to warn employers to carefully comprehend the grades provided by HKUST. If the school still fails to provide a proper response 7 days after the email is drafted, we shall contact the media to make all those proven problems public.

 

Lastly, we would like to clarify that this email does not intend to make personal critiques to any teaching staff, administrative staff or students. All we are looking for is our effort being properly awarded and an environment that encourages academic conduct. We hereby sincerely hope that the incident can be resolved peacefully.

Regards,

Students of HKUST