Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College
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Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College Fiseha M. Guangul 1 Basim A. Khidhir 1
& Adeel
H. Suhail 1 & Muhammad I. Khalit 1 &
Received: 31 July 2020 / Accepted: 15 October 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract 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. Keywords Summative assessment and testing . COVID-19 . Remote assessment .
Academic dishonesty . Proctored exam
1 Introduction Due to COVID-19 pandemic disease, almost all sectorial activities around the world has been affected. Higher education institutions are one of the sectors in which most
* Fiseha M. Guangul [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability
activities are affected since conducting face-to-face class and laboratory activities would require physical interactions. Once it is recognized that the virus is transmitted by direct contact and surfaces in the immediate environment with infected person or with objects used by the infected person (WHO, 2020), higher institutions are forced to suspend face-to-face classes. Consequently, most higher institutions have rushed to remote teaching and online classes. This does however create unprecedented challenges in terms of getting used the technologies and in accessing essential facilities such as laboratories (Cooper & Tschobotko, 2020). Since there were no clear policy and guidelines in most higher institutions on online teaching, several questions such as what to teach, how to teach, what should be the duties of the teacher and the student, the workload of the teacher, the teaching environment, and the implications for
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