**7.3 Sub question- how were the examinations monitored during this COVID-19 pandemic?**

Running examinations, the traditional way became very difficult as universities totally closed for a longer period. Universities were forced to innovate and run open book exams online where application of epileptological and cognitive difficulties challenged students to finish the exams on allocated time [25]. Issues with examination cheating and sharing of answer sheet using technologies such Bluetooth and mobile devices took tall. Despite efforts by South African universities to run online examinations, literature showed that they were difficult to manage from perspective of student cheating, lack of technological skills by students to upload their answer sheets and lack of support from ICT department [25]. In Zimbabwe, online examination online was at larger extent a failure because of data cost and connectivity [29]. Generally, managing and running examinations online caused a lot of challenges and provided learning curves for most the universities. Perhaps this may raise many questions on the pass rate of students on exams to consolidate their final course mark.
