scholarly journals The prevalence and characteristics of online assessment in Australian universities

Author(s):  
Rod Byrnes ◽  
Allan Ellis

<span>Assessment is one of the key elements of the teaching and learning process. It provides teachers with a means of evaluating the quality of their instruction. Students also use it to drive and direct their learning. Online teaching and learning will continue to become more important to Australian universities in order for them to remain competitive and economically viable. In the online environment, assessment is no less critical than in traditional face to face environments. However, assessment risks being overlooked or at least marginalised in the rush to place course content online. This paper provides a snapshot of the prevalence and characteristics of online assessment in Australian universities during 2004. It highlights useful information regarding the use of online assessment in the university sector and illustrates that overall this crucial area is not being given the attention or resources it requires.</span>

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-55
Author(s):  
Mary Kalantzis ◽  
Bill Cope

Universities and colleges have dragged their feet making the move to online teaching and learning. Suddenly, with this COVID-19 crisis, everyone had to move online. Few universities or colleges are prepared for such a rapid shift. Meanwhile, the conventional wisdom remains - the gold-standard for learning is traditional face-to-face, while online is second-best. But perhaps, even without COVID-19, in-person learning is ripe for radical transformation. At the University of Illinois, we’ve been researching this transformation, and developing and testing online learning solutions. Simply put, online can be completely different, and with the right tools, potentially much superior to in-person teaching. To reap the benefits of online learning, we need to abandon the current generation educational technologies—systems and processes that mostly do little more than reverse-engineer traditional classrooms.


Author(s):  
Daniel A. Nkemleke

COVID-19 caught everyone by surprise, and even the most advanced higher education institutions around the world probably had challenges moving from Face-to-Face (F2F) to online teaching and learning. For Cameroon, where internet connectivity is still very low, both teachers and students have had a hard time switching to virtual classrooms. This chapter discusses the challenges they have faced in navigating this trajectory in the department of English at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) of the University of Yaoundé 1 (UYI) during the period of lockdown. Based on the experience of 14 teachers who grappled with 14 online courses and F2F mode, the study concludes that due to students’ inability to access the internet with ease, any online teaching/learning at ENS has to be largely complemented with F2F activities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-243
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria CHISEGA-NEGRILĂ

Abstract: As the time in which online teaching and learning was still an element of novelty has long been gone, virtual learning environments have to be studied thoroughly so that they will provide students not only with the necessary knowledge, but also with the proper tools to meet their learning objectives. The advancement in information technology and the access to an almost inordinate number of learning and teaching tools should have already been fructified and, as a result, not only teachers, but also learners should have already picked up the fruit of knowledge grown in the vast virtual environment of the Internet. However, as education has recently moved almost entirely online, some questions have arisen. Are the Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) enough to offer ESL students both motivation and knowledge? Will foreign languages benefit from this growing trend or will traditional, face-to-face interaction, prove to have been more efficient? The present article will look into some of these questions and into the benefits of VLEs in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.


Author(s):  
Girija S. Singh

COVID-19-related disruption in teaching in the University of Botswana led the school to prepare new strategies for running classes and to design innovative way of instruction.  The most notable change was to replace face-to-face lectures with online teaching at least partially (blended teaching and learning). This posed many challenges, especially in the teaching of science and technology subjects. In a laboratory-based discipline such as chemistry the problems encountered were especially daunting.  Moreover, writing mathematical equations, chemical reactions and reaction mechanisms posed their own difficulties.  The present communication provides a brief overview of how chemistry education at the University, the premier national university of Botswana, has been transformed during the last three semesters.  It is based on experience of the author and as judged by the feed-back received from colleagues and the students. Admittedly, the experience is limited and much discussion is still in progress to meet the unresolved challenges. Theory classes at undergraduate levels are now mostly taught online using packages such as Moodle and MS Teams. The tutorial and laboratory sessions have faced the greatest disruptions and the instructors continue to explore ways to conduct these virtually.  Online examinations were found to be limited in their effectiveness, especially in the assessment of drawing chemical structure and reaction mechanisms as well as the students’ ability in scientific writing.


Author(s):  
Nikleia Eteokleous ◽  
Rita Panaoura

In this chapter, the two authors co-construct meaning of their individual lived experiences as education faculty engaging in online teaching and learning. It highlights each faculty unique experiences facilitating graduate student learning in an online environment. Co-construction of meaning centers on pedagogical approaches, program design and focus, reflection of faculty-self experiences, employment of digital learning tools, and utilization of best practices of each faculty experience with teaching and learning in an online environment. This narrative is co-constructed following a collaborative autoethnographic approach by two faculty, whereby the central descriptions of each faculty member is situated in one's lived experiences and rich story of facilitating and instructing courses in an online learning environment. The faculty experiences are mainly derived from teaching graduate courses offered by a department of education. The research method in presenting two self-reflective narratives in online teaching and learning extends to doing “collaborative autoethnography.”


Author(s):  
Albert L. Ingram ◽  
Lesley G. Hathorn

Collaboration and cooperation have become firmly established as teaching methods in face-to-face classes (e.g., Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998). They are also rapidly becoming widespread in online teaching and learning in both hybrid (mixed traditional and online) course and distance courses. The methods are likely to be most effective if they are firmly grounded in how people actually work together. Some groups collaborate more successfully than others. Frequently, instructors may place students into groups in the expectation that they will collaborate without a clear idea of what collaboration is or how to recognize and encourage it. We must define what we mean by the terms, both so that we can use the techniques successfully and so that we can research them accurately.


Author(s):  
Albert L. Ingram ◽  
Lesley G. Hathorn

Collaboration and cooperation have become firmly established as teaching methods in face-to-face classes (e.g., Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998). They are also rapidly becoming widespread in online teaching and learning in both hybrid (mixed traditional and online) course and distance courses. The methods are likely to be most effective if they are firmly grounded in how people actually work together. Some groups collaborate more successfully than others. Frequently, instructors may place students into groups in the expectation that they will collaborate without a clear idea of what collaboration is or how to recognize and encourage it. We must define what we mean by the terms, both so that we can use the techniques successfully and so that we can research them accurately. In addition, we must distinguish between groups in which people act independently from those who act collaboratively. As Surowiecki (2004) has pointed out, when all the results are aggregated, a large number of people acting independently may give a more accurate solution to a problem than an expert. Interdependent groups may often produce results inferior to the results obtained by their best-performing members or may be affected by a “groupthink” mentality.


Author(s):  
Geraint Lang

Twenty First Century Education is undergoing change not only to keep in step with the emerging technological innovations, but also to address the needs and meet the high expectations of a technically sophisticated student body. Physical manifestations of these changes may be seen in new institutional building work. Technologically, the Facebook Generation of students in our universities expect online access across the campus, not only to all manner of information and social networks, but to their course work. A growing body of the student population now remain in full time employment, enrolled via online courses. Their virtual access to teaching and learning requires a different form of tuition to that generally experienced in face to face lectures. Online teaching and learning is a facilitated process, which this chapter seeks to explain. The role of the facilitator is explained, along with the process of online learning, with reference to an established online degree course, Ultraversity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 791-811
Author(s):  
Lesley Gourlay

Abstract The term ‘quarantine’ is derived from the Italian quarantena, from quaranta, referring to the forty days of isolation traditionally imposed during the era of the Black Death in Europe. This paper examines this and related contemporary terms, in order to consider the complex and contradictory nature of enforced sites of isolation, with reference to the historical literature. The centrality of spatial practices in the current pandemic is emphasised, with a focus on the normally unobserved, micro practices of individuals under ‘lockdown’. The paper reports on an interview study conducted at a large UK Higher Education institution during the Covid-19 ‘lockdown’, and analyses the accounts of six academics, focusing particularly on their embodied and sociomaterial practices, with reference to the etymological analysis. The paper considers the extent to which their reported experiences reflect the various meanings of the term sequestrato, going on to propose that their working practices, particularly focused on screens and video calls, are characterised by a need to ‘perform the university’. I speculate on how the ontological nature of the university itself has been fundamentally altered by the closure of the campus and lockdown, proposing that the site of the university is now radically dispersed across these sequestered bodies. I conclude by calling into the question the accuracy of the term ‘online teaching and learning’, instead suggesting that in a fundamental sense, none of these practices is in fact ‘online’ or digital.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document