Online assessment in a business department during COVID-19: Challenges and practices

Abstract

The sudden transition to online assessment due to COVID-19 brought unique challenges for both students and instructors. Indeed, the educational institutions were unprepared or did not have the capacity to deliver the courses online. The scarcity of literature addressing the challenges of the in-person to online migration was the main motivation for writing this paper. We first discuss the main challenges of online assessment that we experienced when migrating from an in-class to an online environment due to the COVID-19 outbreak, namely, academic integrity, adaptation to the new testing environment, technical problems and anxiety. We then elaborate on the practices we developed to minimize their impacts on both students' and instructors' performance. To maintain academic integrity, a combination of practices including awareness/communication, restricted test features and administrative proctoring were applied. The grade distributions of similar courses with in-class and online assessments were compared to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed practices in enhancing academic integrity. The efficacy of a pilot test in enhancing adaptation to a new testing environment is also discussed. The combination of a grace period, a pilot test and communication plans seems to be an effective practice to minimize complaints related to technical problems and students’ anxiety. Finally, we found that our coordination with the information technology department and implementing a pilot test helped instructors minimize their anxiety regarding working in the new environment.