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The novel coronavirus pandemic is projected to cause an elevation in anxiety levels across the globe. With everything shifting to online mode, the teaching-learning has also gone virtual. This study aims to analyze the impact of novel coronavirus and online education on student’s anxiety and self-efficacy, investigate the role of coping strategies as a moderator between anxiety and self-efficacy. Also, develop and validate an online exam anxiety scale.

The data is collected by undertaking a cross-sectional survey of 434 higher education students from various universities. For conceptualization of the construct of online exam anxiety, the principal component analysis is carried out. Thereafter, the conceptual model is validated and tested using confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.

The hypothesized model demonstrated good reliability and validity. The results showed that students’ anxiety has an adverse impact on their self-efficacy. Findings indicate that the sample in this study reported more anxiety owing to online examinations in comparison to coronavirus induced anxiety. Also, it was found that the relationship between anxiety and self-efficacy was stronger at low levels of coping strategy whereas it got considerably weakened at high levels of coping strategy.

The study is limited to students who belong at other levels of education. Further studies can attempt to capture the impact of COVID on student anxiety. This study was restricted to students in the age group of 18–25. The impact of COVID can be studied in a different age group in the future.

This study offers important implications for educators, practitioners and policymakers working in the education sector. It presents an interesting insight into how the sudden change in pedagogical delivery to online mode is preventing a smooth transition for students and becoming a cause of anxiety. It recommends higher education institutions to develop an innovative and robust approach to promote and address mental health issues among students. It also stresses the need for ensuring that the process of conducting online examinations are streamlined and adequate guidance is given to students.

The study proposes the need for training students and teachers on the application of an blended learning approach and efficient adoption of information and communication technology resources in teaching-learning.

The current study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by stressing that adaptive-behavioral and emotion-focused coping strategies are significantly helpful in tackling coronavirus related anxiety. It also recommends the need for Higher education institutions to play an active role in strengthening their preparedness strategies for effective management of outbreaks and pandemics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the prevalence of academic stress and exam anxiety among private secondary school students in India as well as the associations with socio-economic and study-related factors.

Participants were 400 adolescent students (52 percent male) from five private secondary schools in Kolkata who were studying in grades 10 and 12. Participants were selected using a multi-stage sampling technique and were assessed using a study-specific questionnaire.

Findings revealed that 35 and 37 percent reported high or very high levels of academic stress and exam anxiety respectively. All students reported high levels of academic stress, but those who had lower grades reported higher levels of stress than those with higher grades. Students who engaged in extra-curricula activities were more likely to report exam anxiety than those who did not engage in extra-curricula activities.

Private high school students in India report high levels of academic stress and exam anxiety. As such there is a need to develop effective interventions to help these students better manage their stress and anxiety.

This is the first study the authors are aware of that explores the academic stress levels of private secondary school students in India. The study identifies factors that may be associated with the experience of high levels of stress that need to be explored further in future research.

The study’s objective was to ascertain the connection between secondary school students' test anxiety, academic self-concept, motivation and academic performance in mathematics. The difference between the academic performances of male and female secondary school students who exhibit high and low test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation levels in mathematics.

Four hypotheses and four research questions were adopted. The design is a correlation. 42,299 mathematics students in senior school year two (SS2) made up the research population. A sample of 1,650 students was selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure. The main instruments used were the Mathematics Test Anxiety Questionnaire (MTAQ), Academic Self-Concept Questionnaire (ASQ) and Academic Motivation Questionnaire (AMQ) and students’ math scores. These instruments were validated by three experts and the reliability coefficients of 0.69, 0.68 and 0.68 were obtained for MTAQ, ASQ and AMQ, respectively, using Cronbach alpha. Pearson product moment correlation was used to analyze the data.

The study’s results showed a correlation between secondary school students' academic performance in mathematics and test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation. There was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' test anxiety; there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' self-concept and academic performance in mathematics, and there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' motivation and academic performance in mathematics.

The major contribution of this study is to investigate the connection between test anxiety, academic self-concept motivation and students’ mathematics performance. There is a difference between psychological variables, gender and mathematics performance.

This study involved a group of Middle Eastern Muslim women (ages ranging from 16-36) learning mathematics through social justice pedagogy. One of the important lessons from this experience is that, despite some of the unique challenges associated with teaching for social justice, in this context this method of teaching is doable and beneficial. However, in the current atmosphere throughout the Middle East it is a very challenging task: it needs courage and commitment on the part of the teacher/researcher, as well as support and even protection by the head of the college or policymakers to ensure that it leads to positive learning outcomes.

How do we teach information management students about the business environment? • How can we design courses on information sources and services provision that interest and motivate students?

The study aims to ascertain the degree to which Saudi tertiary level writers experience foreign language (FL), English, writing anxiety compared with other variables known to affect writing, such as motivation, types of self-efficacy or teacher assistance, how anxiety relates to those other variables, and whether the effects of anxiety on writing are always perceived as negative.

This study used questionnaire and interview data following writing tasks in two conditions (practice and exam).

The key findings were that, regardless of level or writing condition, writing anxiety emerged as the least strongly experienced of all the relevant variables. From factor analysis, it was found to be associated with perceived general English language proficiency and writing strategic ability and not with topic knowledge, teacher or motivational variables. Contrary to the assumption in much of the literature, many participants experienced some anxiety as having a positive effect on their English writing, in certain ways and at certain times (dependent on the writing condition) and not solely a negative impact.

Implications are drawn for theory and for the teaching of writing.

Drawn towards the end of the paper.

Any research on factors that affect writing seemingly has practical value and implications in such contexts, in addition to interest for L2 writing research and theory.

There remains a question that applies across the whole field of anxiety research in education and applied linguistics concerning whether anxiety is, as often assumed, always bad and so constitutes something to be removed, or whether in fact some degree of anxiety is actually helpful (Alpert and Haber, 1960). This study aims to answer.

The study has two main objectives. The first is to introduce three new examination policy practices: overbooked exam rooms, a substitute invigilator and an inheritance of the invigilation distribution. The second is the use of the examination model to determine the sustainability of the system against expected changes and to obtain long-term strategic information. This study aims to obtain managerial insights on the sustainability of the examination system with the newly introduced practices; it does not claim to propose solutions for large-scale problems.

This study introduces a multi-objective mathematical model that contains a couple of constraints that belong to new practices. To check the sustainability of the system, this study gets help from sensitivity analysis, which informs the decision-maker about how the results will react to parameter changes. The authors perform all experiments in the Python/Gurobi modeling environment.

The results demonstrate that the proposed practices are effective in the efficient use of resources. Also, this study shows that the examination model can be used as a stress test so that the weaknesses of the system can be identified and long-term strategic information can be obtained.

The contribution of this study is twofold: the introduction of examination policy practices that are overbooked exam rooms, a substitute invigilator and an inheritance of the invigilation distribution. Overbooked exam rooms aim to use resources effectively, taking into account the possibility of temporarily increasing the exam room capacity. The substitute invigilator protects the examination process against sudden events. The inheritance of the invigilation distribution helps to ensure fairness; and the use of the examination model to obtain managerial insights on expectations. This allows testing the validity of existing policies and making necessary changes, taking into account possible changes in the system. In this respect, it differs from the studies in the literature and fills an important managerial gap.

To improve the academic integrity of online examinations, digital proctoring systems have recently been implemented in higher education institutions (HEIs). The paper aims to understand how digital proctoring has been practised in higher education (HE) and proposes future research directions for studying digital proctoring in HE.

A systematic literature review was conducted. The PRISMA procedure was adapted for the literature search. The topics were identified by topic modelling techniques from 154 relevant publications in seven databases.

Seven widely discussed topics in literature were identified, including solutions for detecting cheating and student authentication, challenges/issues of uptakes and students' performance in different proctoring environments.

This paper provides insights for academics, policymakers, practitioners and students to understand the implementation of digital proctoring in academia, its adoption by HEIs, impacts on students' and educators' performance and the rapid increase in its use for digital exams in HEIs, with particular emphasis on the impacts of the systems on digitalising examinations in HE.

This review paper has systematically and critically described the state-of-the-art literature on digital proctoring in HE and provides useful insights and implications for future research on digital proctoring, and how academic integrity in online examinations can be enhanced, along with digitalising HE.

Studies suggest that there is a shortage of minorities entering the professions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This is especially the case with African American males. Several factors that impact this phenomenon are discussed in this chapter, but chiefly the impact of test anxiety and test bias on the absence of African American men in STEM. These factors are significant because society dictates that we embrace the use of tests to determine ability. However, many individuals, including African American males, suffer from test anxiety and are victims of test bias. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics are areas that rely heavily on tests results. Therefore, the impact of test anxiety and test bias as a prohibitory method of denying access to minorities, especially African American males, is worthy of investigation and discussion. The chapter explores this relationship of test anxiety and test bias to the absence of African American males in STEM. It also looks at the importance of historically Black colleges and universities in adding African American males to STEM fields. Plausible solutions to the problem are also provided.

Higher educational institutes (HEIs) are experiencing a significant shift towards online education, which has been fast-forwarded with the global pandemic of COVID-19. The forced shift has also exposed many vulnerabilities in online education, especially assessments. The purpose of this study is to investigate the potential dark side of the digital transformation of examinations through the lens of university students.

This study involves a sample of 127 university students from the fields of business and science, technology, education and management (STEM) and the key factors affecting student perception were assessed quantitatively to explore the interrelationships.

Results revealed that both business and STEM students have a similar impression of the use of online examinations, and the majority still have mixed feelings about them as a replacement for physical examinations. The regrouping of the factors revealed two key dimensions, trustworthiness and apprehensible education, as key areas of student perception in the context of online examinations.

This study aims to strengthen the understanding of Kolb’s experiential learning mechanism through a discussion on the importance of abstract conceptualization as opposed to concrete experience in the establishment of the online assessment and learning space. Practically speaking, increasing investment in internet infrastructure and forming strategic alliances with important parties, like internet providers, to create uninterrupted network coverage, are an effective place to start if one wants to make sure that the process of moving to online learning is becoming more and more accepted by educators, students, and the general public.

The online transition to higher education has seen expedited growth since the pandemic and has not given much room for many HEIs globally to adjust. The procedures and techniques implemented take a Western lens, and less attention is given to the emerging context and its context-specific characteristics in such implementation. This study takes the theoretical lens of Kolb and proposes the key learnings for a successful online transition to assessment in emerging contexts.