Bangladeshi universities are concerned
about implementing online teaching and assessment to combat epidemic situations
though there is skepticism regarding online education. I would like to share
some of my recent learnings during my master’s program in Australia. Understandably,
the Australian context is quite dissimilar to our country but still, we can gather
some gross insights that might provide us with some basic thoughts for online
teaching and assessment strategies. Because of highly developed IT
infrastructure, knowledge, and initiatives, and financial strength, no
universities in Australia faced any kind of major interruptions in the academic
semesters since the pandemic hit the country. I am trying to produce a synopsis
of how they managed it with excellent outcomes.
How did they operate?
1. Since the universities are independent in academic decision making, the universities planned well ahead sensing the pandemic situations to move to online education. It was relatively an easy decision for them as IT infrastructure and IT literacy are quite high here. In relevant cases, some universities provided laptops as a loan to needy students.
2. Most of the classes were held LIVE via Zoom software which is perfectly designed for online teaching. The software is highly interactive and efficient for online education.
3. For some courses, the teachers recorded the lecture via Zoom and shared it through the central Learning Management System known as LMS (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, etc.) developed and managed by a third party.
4. For a few courses, the teachers prepared the PowerPoints embedded with Audio/video lectures and shared them through the LMS.
5. Some essential knowledge and skills cannot be acquired online, and for those cases, programs were altered/adjusted to ensure that the students can gain the knowledge and skills before graduation.
6. All exams/assessments were taken online but in different ways maintaining all the needed protocol to tackle any kind of cheat and plagiarism issues.
7. No teachers bothered about attendance as all classes were recorded and uploaded for later use. In fact, if the students do not consult with the class, it is very difficult to pass the exams.
8. There were no uniform rules for course design and assessments. It widely varied from discipline to discipline and from course to course as the intended outcomes and objectives of different disciplines and courses are not the same.
9. Here, a central Learning Management System (LMS) is a key for communicating and sharing the reading resources with the students. Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, etc. are such kind of learning management systems which have long been used by different universities in Australia.
Assessments
strategies:
The main objective of the assessment/exam is to see if the students fully understand the concept. It is not just checking their memory. Based on this basic principle, there are three strategies:
1. Assignment based assessment: Some courses do not have any final exams for assessment. They just have different types of assignments (for 100% marks) which are designed in such a way that the students need to study to prepare those assignments. These assignments are submitted through the LMS where there is in-built plagiarism software (e.g. Turnitin). This software checks if there is any kind of plagiarism from all currently and previously submitted assignments, literature, websites, and any other reports. The software gives the similarity percentage. If the percentage is not acceptable, the students get warned for the first time and then get failed for intentional repetition. The teachers also use personal judgments regarding the software detected issues.
2. Mixed assessment: Some other courses have a combination of assignments (20% to 60%) and a final exam (40% to 80%). For the final exam, some universities are providing two options for the course teachers (ultimately, the decision depends on the course teacher):
a.
Exam on
ProctorU software: This software is designed for online exams used by
top-ranked universities. When the students sit for exams through this software,
they are monitored by an invigilator via camera. Their screen is also monitored
by the invigilator. This option is basically for the courses which require
memorization.
b.
The second
option is an open book exam where the teachers upload the question on LMS and
the students download the question and after writing it on MS word, they submit
it again via the LMS using built-in plagiarism software (e.g. Turnitin). Here
the exam papers are set creatively rather than putting straight-forward questions
so that the students have to critically think to answer those questions. Again,
the answer scripts are checked by the plagiarism software.
3. Practical exams: Exams are carried over to the first practicable time when face to face exams will be possible as there is no alternative format for these exams. Where exams could not be held before the finalization of grades, students will be awarded an incomplete grade, until the exams can be run.
I would like to share below links where some documents are available for reference purposes only.
1. Course Profiles, and Question Paper for Online Exam
To conclude, I am writing this article with an inner urge to share the international standards of online education and assessment at the tertiary level. And I believe universities in Bangladesh also aspire for international standards.
The article was published on The Daily Sun on Dec 24, 2020.
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