The University of Nairobi (UoN) on Tuesday managed to conduct its first-ever end of semester online exam. This is owed to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak that prompted students to vacate the campuses.

The university’s management stated that more than 20 students pursuing Master of Arts in Environmental Law and Master of Arts in Environmental Policy sat their examinations from the comfort of their homes.

In a statement released by UoN, Vice-Chancellor Prof. Stephen Kiama the exams come after 5500 virtual classes had been held in the course of the semester and more were still going on.

Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox

Enter valid email-id

Subscribe

I prefer it on Telegram

“We used Google platforms to administer our exams-first we invited our students to Google Classroom so that we are able to see all of them and then we used Google Meet to monitor or invigilate the process,” said Dr Collins Odote, the Director, Centre for Advanced Studies in Environmental Law and Policy (CASELAP).

Of course, the past few weeks have not been easy for the school that was suddenly forced to adopt online classes for every single course in the wake of the outbreak.

Prof. Kiama did note that the mechanisms had been put in place to ensure the quality of the online exams is not compromised in any way.

This comes shortly after news came out that the university had agreed to partner with Telkom Kenya to provide free data bundles for faculty and students to facilitate online learning. There were students who complained of poor connection that was interrupting their learning a matter that was solved by providing them with playback lecture videos and course-ware packages.

It will be interesting to see how other local universities also look to conduct their online exams if they choose to do so in the first place.