‘Who knows what will come next to interrupt our assessments’: the adaptability of assessments across face-to-face and online instructional environments

Abstract

Universities are increasingly facing disruptions from political crises, natural disasters and public health emergencies, prompting a shift to emergency online teaching. It is different to normal online teaching as students may lose access to campus, community/society or even hosting countries. This qualitative study investigated the adaptability of assessments when shifting entirely from face-to-face to emergent online modes. Data was collected from four disciplines at the macro level and 74 courses from eight disciplines at the micro level. Five design feature dimensions were identified as affecting assessment adaptability between two instructional environments: students’ resources access, student autonomy, measurement focus, external standard adherence and venues/contexts/equipment reliance. The results revealed an increasing use of asynchronous assessments and increased student control and responsibility in assessments. Three levels of changes were observed, including pedagogical changes from testing students’ memories to measuring students’ higher-level understanding. In addition to the challenges in assessment security reported in previous literature about shifts to online modes, this study identified new areas of challenges to assessment validity, fairness of assessments, teacher control, teachers’ and students’ assessment literacy and university infrastructure. A model on the adaptability of assessment is proposed, offering implications for online assessment.