Exploring Teacher’s Perspectives about Online Assessment during the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Saudi Context

Abstract

The emergency transition to online learning due to COVID-19 has forced many sectors to respond quickly. The readiness of educational institutes to attend to the abrupt crisis and shift to teach remotely is practiced at different levels. Online assessment is one of them. Rapid advances in technology and software applications are changing the practices of assessment in innumerable ways. Teachers are encouraged to implement a diverse array of assessment methods to measure the learning process of their students in an online environment which may not be the same as conventional learning. Therefore, the current study aims to explore teachers’ perspectives about online assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic in a Saudi context. This study endeavours to shed light on this aspect of online assessment by answering the main question of challenges and benefits faced by English teachers in an online environment. The study was qualitative in nature deploying semi-structured interviews with English instructors to collect data about the researched matter. The findings revealed that the most preferred online assessment tool teachers used to implement was the multiple-choice format. Also, the analysis showed that challenges associated with online assessment were diverse, and some of them were handled appropriately while others remained. For the advantages, they worked in favour of teachers, students and department. This was observed in the opportunities online assessment could provide to save time, easiness to design, take and record and objectivity in marking. Implications and recommendations were offered for further direction and research.