Assessment in 'survival mode': student and faculty perceptions of online assessment practices in HE during Covid-19 pandemic (original) (raw)

Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability

Due to the unprecedented COVID-19 incident, higher education institutions have faced different challenges in their teaching-learning activities. Particularly conducting assessments remotely during COVID-19 has posed extraordinary challenges for higher education institutions owing to lack of preparation superimposed with the inherent problems of remote assessment. In the current study, the challenges of remote assessment during COVID-19 incident in higher education institutions were investigated taking Middle East College as a case study. For the study, questionnaires were prepared and data from 50 faculties were collected and analyzed. The study focused on the challenges of remote assessment in general and academic dishonesty in particular. The main challenges identified in remote assessment were academic dishonesty, infrastructure, coverage of learning outcomes, and commitment of students to submit assessments. To minimize academic dishonesty, preparing different questions to each student was found to be the best approach. Online presentation was also found to be good option to control academic integrity violations. Combining various assessment methods, for instance report submission with online presentation, helps to minimize academic dishonesty since the examiner would have a chance to confirm whether the submitted work is the work of the student.

E-Assessment at Jordan’s Universities in the Time of the COVID-19 Lockdown: Challenges and Solutions

Arab World English Journal

This study aims to delineate the observations of instructors at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) in Jordan with regards to online assessment of their students in the time of the Coronavirus lockdown. Specifically, the study attempts to find out whether universities are prepared for online assessment during the lockdown and to probe feasible solutions to the challenges that hinder proper assessment in a virtual learning environment (VLE). As the challenges are determined, the study suggests a number of practical solutions. Data on faculty’s observations were obtained by means of an online survey. Eighty-three faculty members participated in this study. The findings showed that universities swiftly shifted to e-classes during the lockdown but that they were not adequately primed for an appropriate assessment in an online environment. The findings further showed that instructors were skeptical about the efficiency of remote assessment of their students. In addition, fac...

The impact of online assessment challenges on assessment principles during COVID-19 in Oman

Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice

With the emergence of COVID-19, many educational pillars have been altered from conventional ways to online solutions. The educational assessment has been administered in online environments despite all encountered challenges. This descriptive study aimed to uncover the online assessment challenges that were confronted. Furthermore, it intended to display the impact of these challenges on the assessment principles. A mixed-method approach was adopted for data collection. A survey was used to collect quantitative data from 60 academic staff at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with four of them. The study found some challenges when applying online assessment such as learners’ refusal to turn on cameras, heavy teaching loads, cheating, the long time required for developing online assessment instruments, impersonation/dishonesty, assessing practical experiences, plagiarism, grades’ inflation, assessing group’s work, academic integrity and a...

ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN TIMES OF PANDEMIC: OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR CHANGE

Emerald Publishing, 2023

In higher education, the usual assessment methods are oral or written exams, multiple-choice questions, and individual or group written essays. However, in a distance learning context, it is often necessary to offer students more support, including formative assessment and self-assessment strategies. International reports have shown that teachers have adapted their learning assessment strategies during the Covid-19 pandemic. How did educators adapt their assessment strategies recently during the pandemic? What are the intentions underlying their decision-making? Our objective is to understand the decision-making process of teacher educators and university teachers in adapting their methodology for assessing student learning during the pandemic. To answer these questions, we adopted a qualitative research approach. We collected data from 29 different countries via: (1) open-ended questionnaires, (2) personal accounts, (3) unstructured interviews, and (4) a specific questionnaire about assessment. Four main categories emerged from our data: (1) challenges, (2) assessment practices, (3) changes in teachers' perceptions and practices, and (4) reflection on assessment. The findings suggest that (1) uses of technology for assessment have developed strongly; (2) careful coordination among colleagues is very important; (3) educators developed formative assessment strategies; and (4) educators' reflections have focused on many challenges: ethical, technical, and pedagogical.

Lessons on maintaining assessment integrity during COVID-19

International Journal for Educational Integrity

In an era where conditions for education are rapidly changing globally, online assessment presents several opportunities as well as challenges in the higher education landscape. The forceful transition from face-to-face to online assessments, as part of the emergency implementation of online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has affected teaching, learning, and assessment experiences worldwide. This study explores how faculty members in Saudi universities secured their online assessment during phase one of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research aims were: 1) identifying faculty assessment practices before the onset of COVID-19 and comparing these with practices during the pandemic, and 2) identifying the major challenges faced by the faculty members of the study in securing their online assessment to ensure that academic integrity and assessment standards remained intact. Data were collected from seven university professors through a self-reporting survey, followed by semi-structu...

E-assessment during COVID-19 pandemic at a Saudi university: impact on assessment methods and course learning outcomes

Journal of Language and Cultural Education, 2024

The deployment of e-assessments has been so frequent in educational institutions worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is worth questioning the efficacy of this newly adopted evaluation method. The study aims to determine how far this testing effectively achieves the Course Learning Outcomes. It also tries to explore the extent of difference between the online assessment method from the pre-pandemic testing methods stated in the course specification. Another aim of the study is to check the acceptance of e-tests by the learners. This study employs a quantitative approach encompassing a Likert-type online questionnaire to gather the response of 70 faculty members at the university in Saudi Arabia. The primary result of this study is that e-assessment succeeds in attaining Course Learning Outcomes to a great extent. Though these newly adopted tests shifted away from the stated measurement methods in the course specification, the learners accepted them enthusiastically. It was discovered in the study that if educational institutes have well-structured e-learning infrastructures and regularly use these setups competently, they confront minor complexities to switching to online ones and achieve Course Learning Outcomes applying e-assessment systems.

Student Opinions on the Assessment and Evaluation Applications Performed During the Covid 19 Pandemic in Higher Education

Sakarya University Journal of Education, 2022

With the COVID-19 pandemic, new experiences have begun to be experienced globally in many sectors in the world and in Turkey. The COVID-19 pandemic, which affects every field, has brought new applications especially in education. In higher education, there have been changes in the teaching, measurement and evaluation practices with the emergency distance education process. In this study, students' views on measurement and evaluation applied in the emergency distance education process in higher education were examined. The aim of this research, which was conducted within this framework, is to examine the opinions of the senior students of the education faculty regarding the measurement and evaluation practices in the emergency distance education process during COVID-19. Within the scope of this study, which was approved by the ethics committee, the opinions of 40 education faculty senior students were collected through an open-ended questionnaire. In addition, nine volunteers from the students participating in the research were interviewed. The collected data were analyzed through the MAXQDA-2020 qualitative data analysis program. As a result of the analyzes made, six themes were determined regarding measurement and evaluation, including obstacles encountered, exam applications, homework applications, general success status, preferences regarding measurement and evaluation tools, and suggestions for measurement and evaluation applications. While the students mainly emphasized cheating in measurement and evaluation practices in the distance education process, they emphasized the use of homework in the evaluation of student success. In line with these results, suggestions were made to researchers and policy makers.

Assessment practices in Saudi higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Humanities and Social Communication, 2022

This study determines the assessment practices used by teaching staff in Saudi universities, explores how these assessment practices have changed during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and investigates how teaching staffs' priorities and preferences for education on assessment during the pandemic were shaped. To support professional development, the study also aims to raise teaching staffs' awareness of assessment practices. Teaching staff in Saudi universities were invited to complete the Approaches to Classroom Inventory survey. The results showed that the most highly endorsed practices included giving feedback, linking assessments to learning objectives and learning outcomes, using scoring guides, and monitoring and revising assessment approaches. The least endorsed practices included mapping summative assessment to curriculum expectations, responding to the cultural and linguistic diversity of students, and accommodating students with special needs/exceptionalities in assessments. Further, during the pandemic, formative assessments were rarely used. Although faculty members from various colleges and fields of specialty showed similar patterns in endorsing assessment practices, they differed in their preferences and needs for assessment education.

The Role of the E-Learning Departments in Controlling the Quality of Electronic Assessments in Palestinian Universities during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sustainability

The research aimed to identify the role of the e-learning departments in Palestinian universities in controlling the quality of the academic processes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection was conducted using interviews starting from November 2020 and ending in December 2020 during the academic year 2020/2021. The interviews included a number of questions within the axis of electronic assessment. The population of the study consisted of directors of e-learning departments in a number of Palestinian universities, namely: University A, University B, University C, University D, and University E. The main study findings indicated that the universities agreed that the assessment at the beginning of the pandemic sought to save what could be saved in the emergency period, which made electronic assessment a complex issue in this pandemic. Moreover, the problem of plagiarism and faked identities was one of the biggest problems faced by university instructors in the electronic assessm...