It’s officially Easter break now for the majority of Denmark. Despite all the chaos and madness that has come with the Corona Virus situation, the weather is thankfully starting to take a turn for the better. From gloomy, rainy, and windy days, the sun is now out and warming up the city of Copenhagen to remind us that there’s still something to look forward to despite this quarantine.
As of now, I have officially finished my quarter one exams. The classes I took consisted of Principles of International Marketing and an online Consumer Behaviour and Qualitative Methods course. In the midst of the COVID-19 situation, all exams at CBS turned into online take-home handwritten exams. This change didn’t make a difference for my classes, however, as both classes originally had online take-home final exams that we turned in online.
My International Marketing exam was a 72-hour maximum 10-page paper where we answered questions based on a case study. Throughout the quarter, we had many case study practice papers, which prepared us for the exams well. On the other hand, my online Consumer Behaviour and Qualitative Methods exam was a 10-page paper we had to write based on a research study that I conducted, in which we had a total of 2 weeks to write. Even though this class was online, it was extremely interactive, which helped us apply the concepts we were learning in class. Our lectures were short and not too content-heavy however, we had learning tasks we posted on a class forum every week that actually helped prepare us for the final exam.
I really appreciate the exam structures here, as they allow students to showcase their understanding of the course through a means that is not memorization. With this in mind, however, CBS follows some guidelines to writing, most of which were familiar to an average paper I would write in my home university (UH Manoa), however, others baffled me slightly in the writing process of my paper. For example, many teachers at UH will usually indicate that they want a paper written with double line spacing. CBS alternatively states that there’s a limit of 2775 characters per page. This confused me quite a bit, especially when I had my first exam that I did not have much time to write and turn in.
CBS was quick to adjust exam formats for my peers that were supposed to take in-person exams before the virus got bad. The final exams are most definitely different from what I would take at UH Manoa, but it’s exposed me to new forms of learning that I appreciate.