Assessment in engineering education: pre-, during and post-pandemic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The COVID pandemic forced Australian universities to move teaching and assessment from face-to-face to online. As the pandemic eased through 2021 and 2022, face-to-face teaching and assessment resumed. In this article, we ask: What effect did the COVID pandemic have on assessment practices in the engineering school at the University of New South Wales, Canberra? Were changes to assessment made during the move online retained, or did we ‘snapback’ to pre-COVID practices? Why were assessment changes retained or ‘snapped-back’? To answer these questions, we used a mixed-methods approach gathering quantitative and qualitative data. We collated the assessment plans for all subjects offered by the engineering school, from 2019 to 2022 inclusive. We also interviewed course conveners and used causality coding to establish a causal network. We found that most subjects snapped-back to pre-COVID assessment plans. Our assessment was found to depend heavily on exams, both pre- and post-COVID. The causal mapping showed that the snapback was driven by conveners’ concerns with academic integrity and workload, and a preference for face-to-face over online.