Humanizing Tertiary EFL/ESL Speaking Testing and Evaluation During the Online Open Distance Learning (ODL)

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures and online teaching, the issue of online testing and evaluation almost took a back seat as many were focusing on the teaching and learning approaches, material preparations and students-teachers-content connectivism first. This has arrived at a scenario where teachers were not equipped with plagiarism-proof testing approaches, methods to curb ‘behind the scenes’ discussion while taking tests, or even the right number to apply the online testing. A delayed magnitude of measures has been undertaken to solve these issues. The efforts include resorting to online plagiarism software, mark deduction for any answers that seemed similar and mandatory multiple tests. The present paper seeks to discuss these issues and challenges faced by English as a second/foreign language (ESL/FL) teachers and learners in undertaking testing and evaluation during the online open learning period. This exploratory study adopts a non-rigorous PRISMA-SLR method in filtering articles for data selection. The targeted open source was the Google Scholar. Discussion suggests that the issues can be solved by adopting humanising approaches and implementing multiple means to ensure testing and evaluation during the online open learning were handled in a professional manner. The paper suggests more studies to be conducted in relation to the topic.