The students of the State Agrarian University of Moldova this year will sit all the exams online. The Ministry of Education and the university’s administration aim to limit thus the contact with the human factor during the tests and to reduce corruption, Info-Prim Neo reports. Deputy Minister of Education Loretta Handrabura paid a visit to the university on Wednesday. “The opinions are divided. The students who want to be assessed objectively agree. A part of the teachers do not agree as they will have a large amount of work to do because they will have to formulate a lot of answers for one question,” she said. The Agrarian University is the first institution that will organize online exams at all the faculties and specialties two years after testing the new assessment instruments in stages. “We recommend assessment methods, not impose them. This evaluation method fits the distance learning scheme that we want to implement in Moldova in the future so that the migrant workers from outside are able to enter a university when working abroad,” said Loretta Handrabura. The rector of the State Agrarian University Gheorghe Cimpoies said the aim of this new method is to combat corruption. “Maybe a low number of teachers are corrupt, not all the university. This method will help root out corruption,” said the rector. According to Gheorghe Cimpoies, the method is good because the students will learn even better. The grade will not depend on the teacher’s will, but on the real knowledge of the student. The university has over 1 000 computers for online exams. Ion Volentir, head of the Studies Division that coordinates the new assessment method, said the tests contain about 300 questions and the students have one hour or two to answer them. The correct answer is ticked and the answer can be changed during the test. Only the final answer is taken into account. At the end of the test, the program calculates the correct and wrong answers and the grade appears on the screen. Student Ion Ţulea said he was satisfied with the possibility of taking exams online as it is more convenient when the student answers the questions directly, without having to elaborate. Student Alexandru Tcaci considers that when the students have to only tick the answers they often guess and the grade does not show the real level of knowledge.