Being a responsible organization at the national level, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has involved university leadership in a number of consulting meetings for developing guidelines for engaging students in teaching and learning activities in this pandemic. Like the HEC was engaging university leadership on various matters, the same approach is expected from the university leadership for involving faculty and supporting staff to create an enabling environment for teaching and learning. Although, the HEC has also conducted various meetings with government at the federal and provincial levels and other stakeholders for supporting Universities, faculty, and students during these trouble times.
In a similar initiative, on May 12, a meeting with VCs was held wherein specifically assessment and examination possibilities were discussed at length. The main objective was to ‘ensure that universities deliver quality education and that students’ interests are protected.’ All universities were directed to announce transparent assessment policies by June 1, 2020. In this regard, a comprehensive guideline for assessment and examination is issued on May 21, 2020, with different options as minimum standards, benefits and possible shortcomings and misuse of different approaches are also explained.
In the first part of Principles of Assessment Policies for Universities the guidelines clearly state that universities should not consider promotion in a semester without assessment. It adds that students may be given a pass or fail option in the subjects, which may involve one or two assessment tests. On the other side, for a letter grade in subjects may involve multiple assessments over Learning Management System or communication tools for Via Voice etc. Although the uniformity of assessment is desired, in a case if students have no or poor internet connectivity for multiple tests; therefore, such students may be given the option of pass/fail. These guidelines aim to save the time of students who may lose it due to the closure of the universities. The role of the faculty members again becomes important for designing the right assessment approach. The right method will also prevent cheating, unpermitted collaboration, and other practices of academic dishonesty. There is a need for formal training to the faculty members who may not be prepared for this specific way of assessment and examination. In the same manner, students need to be trained by the faculty members for appearing and attempting these new assessment methods. There are chances of errors in this new process. Therefore, students should be given the right to raise a grievance and for that, a grievance redressal mechanism should be in place with proper SOPs and timelines.
There is a need for formal training to the faculty members who may not be prepared for this specific way of assessment and examination
The second part of the guidelines explains four major approaches for assessment and examination with possible scenarios and benefits. The first approach is the use of an Open Book exam wherein students are given tasks that are mostly related to the application of knowledge rather than of sharing the memorized information. The open book assessment can be carried out i.e. send and received through email or LMS. The students need to be trained for this specialized approach in terms of analysis and outcome expected from these open book tests with the given time.
The second approach is written assignments of different types i.e. Research Paper, Literature review, Memos to be submitted at the end of the semester. The students who have good writing skills can perform better if asked to write a research paper, as faculty members are in direct contact with students; therefore better to use an approach that is suitable for the majority of the students in the class. Students can be asked to summarize different chapters of the book or even write a book review of two pages at the end of the semester. The faculty members are required to apprise students first about the structure of write-up i.e. research paper, memo, report, or literature review. Students may collaborate, but similarities in their submissions can be detected through plagiarism detection tools.
The third approach is an oral examination, which is one of the most popular methods of assessment. The approaches mentioned above can be combined with an oral examination for quality evaluation purposes or awarding letter grade to the students. Oral examination can be conducted through different communication tools that are available free of cost or through subscription. For transparency purposes, oral sessions may be recorded for later reference. If there is an internet connectivity issue, a phone call can be an alternative way. The students need to be trained to respond to the questions in a precise and desired manner.
The fourth approach describes the discouraged methods that include Multiple Choice Questions and Closed Book exams. One requires proper invigilation and the other cannot be conducted without sophisticated LMS as the majority of the universities are deploying LMS with basic features. Therefore, it is better to use three other approaches. The guidelines also explain how to deal with subjects where lab work is required; it suggests that either theoretical part be verified through oral examination or labs may be conducted while following SOPs for social distancing. The universities are given liberty to transfer lab part to next semester as well. There is a flexibility of submitting written responses for students of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. They may scan their responses as submitting soft copy would be difficult because equations or graphs etc are not easily drawn in the word processing tools. There is also the consideration of medical conditions in the guidelines which may be carried out with necessary approvals.
The author is Deputy Director at Higher Education Commission. He can be reached at [email protected]