Are Exams Required for Online Courses?

In almost all cases you will be required to write an exam as part of your online course, in many cases more than one will be required. In fact I would say be very wary of any online university that does not require exams. Exams are how students are evaluated at regular schools and so you should not expect it to be any different with online schools.

Since exams are generally required as part of an online course the obvious question would be how do you write them. This is where things can get a bit tricky. If you live near the university you are usually expected to write it there. Most will set up testing dates, usually on the weekend and you just show up and write the exam.

A lot of online schools, particularly those that have a lot of students from outside the local area have set up testing centers in major cities. These work basically the same as the ones at the school itself.

If you don't live near the school or a testing center you are going to have to make your own arrangements to write your exams. This is where things can get a bit complicated. You will need to find both a place to write the exam and somebody to proctor it. In most cases you will be expected to this at a local school with a local teacher as the proctor. In some cases it may be possible to do it at the library.

If you do have to get your own proctor it will add significantly to the cost of your degree. You will have to pay both the school and the proctor for administering your exam. In general you should expect it to cost somewhere between $50 and $100. This really adds up if you figure that there are about forty classes as part of a degree program and each likely has one or two exams.

Because of the difficulty in writing exams it is a good idea to make sure that know where you are going to write them before you register with an online university. The last thing that you are going to want is to find that you get near the end of a course and that there is nowhere to write the final exam.