ONLINE ASSESSMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION DURING PANDEMIC OUTBREAK: CHALLENGES AND EFFECTIVE PRACTICES

Educational activities have been shifting to online mode due to school closures during the Covid[1]19 pandemic. Thus, the online mode of education introduces new ways of teaching and assessment. Both formative and summative assessments have been conducted online, which proved to be challenging and ineffective. Educational stakeholders are in trouble due to this transition of education. Considering this very important issue, this research is planned to investigate the challenges and possible effective practices of assessment in higher education. A qualitative research approach was adopted to collect data from university teachers through a semi-structured interview guide. Thirty teachers were involved in this study through convenient sampling techniques. All the collected data were analyzed by adopting thematic analysis techniques. The findings identified the following key challenges for teachers: (a) poor formative assessment due to less participation of students in online classes; (b) poor quality of learning management system and other applications to get connected with students; (c) students cheat during exams and submit plagiarized work. As to exploring effective practices, teachers suggested the following, (a) exams should be based on an open-book strategy but teachers and students should be prepared for this; (b) the university should invest in developing the infrastructure to teach online; (c) the university should develop a policy to handle malpractices of students. The results are also discussed with the help of available research.