Rethinking Assessment and Feedback in a Digital Age in Crises: Reflections on Large Class Teaching

Abstract

AbstractGlobally, the COVID-19 pandemic created a crisis in education. The call for remote online learning, echoed across universities, demanded an abrupt shift in the approach to teaching and learning: from the traditional and dominant person to person interface to an online virtual space. In South Africa, the context of this study, the Government’s immediate response to the pandemic, in a bid to save the academic year and maintain a degree of normalcy, was through multimodal remote online curriculum offerings. The shift to remote teaching and learning required universities and academics to uphold academic integrity and to maintain worthwhile pedagogical principles and assessment practices. The casualty in the rapid response to the education crisis is often quality teaching, assessment, and feedback. Owing to the rapid migration to the online platform, there has been a renewed emphasis on practical approaches to assessment without scrutiny due regard to whom, by whom, and for what purpose assessment and feedback are given. The pandemic necessitated lockdowns forcing even those who did not want to embrace the digital era to comply with remote online teaching, learning and assessment. Hence, this paper draws on personal experience to reflect on the nuances of remote assessment and feedback, particularly in large classes, and how it plays out in crises within a higher education institution in South Africa. The strident shift towards the new normalcy has the potential to inform policymakers and academics about adaptive and innovative alternatives when responding to challenges of teaching and assessing remotely, even after the COVID-19 crisis.KeywordsAssessmentCOVID-19 pandemicCurriculumFeedbackHigher Education