Wellbeing and achievement in a pandemic exam term – How did we do? What did we learn?

By Julie Bailey with Tania Clarke, Emily Williams and Anna-Rose Harris

At a time when physical wellbeing – our own, those we work with, and in our local, national and global communities – is placed first in our priorities as it was when we made the switch to remote working in March 2020, where do mental wellbeing, achievement and inclusion fit in? Is it a trade-off between forms of wellbeing? Does achievement inevitably fall away? Can inclusive practices survive rapid change? What can we learn from our successes and failures?

Between March and June 2020, I worked closely with final year undergraduate students as a supervisor and as a specialist learning mentor, as well as working on my doctoral research project and completing the remote assessments replacing the BPS (British Psychological Society) qualifying examinations. In many ways, I felt more prepared than colleagues – working for many years with students completing their undergraduate studies in highly challenging circumstances, some taking alternative forms of assessment – with a wide range of tried and tested strategies at my disposal. But, having worked alongside students at the limit of the challenges they can manage, I knew how hard it might get for our undergraduates. 

Some of the colleagues and students I worked with during Easter Term 2020 now join me to share their reflections and thoughts on how we did in supporting wellbeing and achievement and what we can learn from our personal perspectives.

Tania Clarke is a PhD student at the Education Faculty

Emily Williams was a final year undergraduate in the Education Faculty in 2019-20

Anna-Rose Harris was a final year undergraduate at another University of Cambridge department.

The importance of students’ wellbeing as we switched to remote learning and assessment in March 2020 was pretty clear, what did you feel at the time were the most urgent priorities?

What made the most difference to students’ wellbeing in the early stages of remote working?

What was it like to learn and complete assessment remotely?

Julie: usually place a lot of emphasis on gaining a sense of control – control over your work, over the inevitable compromises, and over your mental health. It was reasonable to assume that the combination of the demands of life under lockdown and the demands of academic assessment would put a huge strain on students. So, preparing for assessment included preparing to walk away from the assessment – how do you know if it’s too much pressure? 

Emily: Pre-recorded lectures were really handy and took a lot of the pressure off as they’re pausable, but of course you don’t have the chance to ask questions in the same way as for in-person lectures. Supervisions were pretty much the same as in-person, but the lag sometimes made it more effort to keep the discussion on track and I lost time having to rejoin meetings when the WiFi failed. It was also a bit awkward at first not instantly knowing how to engage with and act in remote supervisions, but with time I got used to this new form of learning. I found I was preparing in the same way as before, creating a list of questions before attending each supervision.

Having to quickly adjust to a new and unfamiliar way of working was a big challenge and daunting prospect, so the academic and pastoral support systems that were available played a huge role in my ability to engage with my studies during this time.

Julie: There are some great advantages to learning remotely – the opportunity to control your working environment and your schedule, less time travelling and locating materials, etc. However, there were many challenges.

For some students, the time it took to confirm remote assessment arrangements and the earlier start to the assessment period dramatically reduced the time available for preparation. This was particularly frustrating for students taking borrowed papers (from a different subject) with different procedures, or for students with disabilities.  Some students found themselves in the position of having to prepare explanations for how the new forms of assessment would be more challenging for them personally, despite being considered accessible to most students – which felt like a huge backward step for inclusion and awareness of neurodiversity. 

Extensions to coursework deadlines were offered to many students, but the issue with deadline extensions was the same as always – to give more time to this piece of work, what have you taken time from? In a similar way, week-long assessment windows can be a blessing and a curse – plenty of time to edit and revise your work, but how do you know when to stop?  What if you tend to be hypercritical of your own work?  In a typical examination, the time pressure and controlled environment can counteract self-critical thoughts – you have no choice but to carry on writing. In a week-long assessment window you run the risk of editing and re-editing your work. Aside from the additional effort and time (particularly with four consecutive assessment weeks) this approach could seriously hinder your ability to write with the conciseness and directness needed at the highest level – over-thinking could actually lower your grade.

To avoid exhaustion and hesitant writing the remotely assessed student needed to develop a high level of clarity – about their own academic strengths and the assessment criteria. Only with confidence in both of these can you produce your best academic writing and know that it’s your best. Likewise, if you have to compromise due to time, energy levels, home circumstances, etc. you can be in control of that compromise … is it good enough?

Tania: For many of the final year students I supervised, sitting their final year exams remotely had its advantages. For one, the need to memorise key information such as author names, dates, quotes and facts, is alleviated. Second, many students preferred being uprooted from the pressure pot of college life during their final year and final term at Cambridge; which for some is tense and breeds unbearable anxiety. Having time to focus the mind without distractions certainly had its advantages for many students.

The space afforded by the adapted assessment format – which provided students with a window of four days or so to complete their written essays – meant that content, structure and argument were given more attention, rather than writing at speed, rote-learned facts and one’s ability to adapt a pre-formulated essay to exam questions. As someone who worked in the assessment sector for three years prior to commencing my PhD, the pandemic raises vital questions about the validity of ‘normal’ assessments. For example, will students be required to rely on memory in the workplace? Will students be required to write at length under timed conditions? Are these abilities therefore all valid to assess? In the assessment literature, such factors are referred to as ‘construct irrelevant variance’. That is, factors that become unintentionally intrinsically tied to the core construct that the assessment is designed to measure. 

On the other hand, I’m sure there will be other Cambridge students who had very different experiences of taking their final year exams under lockdown. Perfectionism procrastination – something my own undergraduate supervisor cautioned me against back in the day – has more space to take up. If students’ achievement goals are to reach ‘perfection’, having more time to achieve this idealism is likely to perpetuate this state of continual striving, and the potential stress it creates. 

Anna-Rose: Completing coursework remotely and having supervisions remotely was altogether fine, and not so different from doing so ‘in person’. I think a difficulty was the sense of uncertainty about having done the right thing, or received the right information, as there was no central faculty information, which increased my anxiety. The exam period of three weeks was initially stressful, as this longer period was assumed to cover most accessibility arrangements, but with the help of my mentor I made sure my tutor understood what I was able to do, and my mentor and I made a plan for the three weeks, which involved stopping if I was not well enough. 

With a strong emphasis on wellbeing, was there a cost to students’ achievement?

Julie: No. There were students who were simply left with too little time to prepare as deeply as they would normally have done, and students whose circumstances made it impossible to prepare in the way they needed, but time spent attending to wellbeing was time spent supporting achievement.

For many students, paying attention to their worries allowed them to recognise both the best ways of working for them personally, and prepare for the challenges of remote assessment.  The diversity of students’ circumstances brought other dimensions of diversity into focus – finding your best way of working supports both wellbeing and achievement, there is no trade-off.

Anna-Rose: I actually found that the emphasis on wellbeing enabled me to achieve more than I would have done otherwise. Being able to recognise a day when I was in too much pain to work and then take a day to recover meant that I could work much more effectively when I was feeling better. Having this in place for the remote assessment meant I didn’t push through on days when I was in pain, and wrote a shorter but better quality essay on a different day. I actually got my highest mark for this paper.

Did we get it right for students?

For some, yes.  There are most definitely students who maintained a better balance and control of their work and mental health by being supported in putting a few simple strategies in place and encouraged to take a self-compassionate approach to their needs.  There are other students whose experiences were lost in the message that the remote assessment arrangements were designed to be flexible enough to meet everyone’s needs – even a flexible system needs to also be adaptable.   

Julie

What did we learn about wellbeing and achievement?

Julie: I think we learnt that maintaining control of their emotional response to their work is just as important for students’ achievement as their wellbeing. Perfectionism, self-doubt and hypercriticality are damaging to both wellbeing and achievement. Clarity of purpose, as reflected in the assessment criteria is vitally important and perhaps we need to spend more time explicitly on these aspects of learning in the future. We can only achieve our best when we write with confidence and clarity of purpose – let’s start building these from the beginning of the course. 

Tania: Students sitting their final year exams at Cambridge are not empty vessels of ‘potential’ to be filled to the brim with rote-learnt facts, and exams needn’t be some sort of trial or test of endurance. When pushed, universities can adapt their assessment practices to maintain validity and fairness while balancing the wellbeing needs of students as whole individuals. Individuals have needs. In the case of final year Cambridge students completing their all-important exams during a global pandemic, these needs are manifold. The need to attain the grade they have worked long and hard for three years is likely going to be highly important for their sense of self-worth and wellbeing. Yet the needs to feel safe, connected to loved ones and accept the unprecedented situation in which they are completing these exams, must have been equally critical to their sense of wellbeing. Wellbeing is the bedrock to be able to achieve. It is the cup from which we pour. Students were juggling these needs for months. I have nothing but admiration for undergraduates who have come out of the other side of their final term with, I hope, their mental wellbeing intact, and a bolstered sense of self-worth having realised their ability to take on a challenge. 

When you allow for the wellbeing of individuals to be a priority over academic attainment, what can actually happen is people are able to achieve more. 

Anna-Rose