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Challenges in Implementing Online Language Assessment-A Critical Reflection of Issues faced amidst Covid-19 Pandemic

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  • University of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France Institute

Abstract and Figures

Over the years many literature on language assessment continue to highlight a myriad of issues and challenges.The delivery of tertiary language courses including their assessments components were put to the test during the recent outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic that necessitates total shift to online mode from the previously conventional or partially online. Due to this circumstance, this paper aims to identify the challenges faced by language lecturers in administering assessment in the online mode and the need to plan good mitigation strategies. Qualitative data was elicited from twenty one key language lecturers as purposive samplings from eleven public universities. Based on basic Delphi approach, they were grouped according to three expertise domains namely online language learning, language curriculum and pedagogy. The expert respondents gave inputs and views to questions via structured written interviews as well as follow-up oral interviews. Emerging themes from the qualitative responses point towards ten challenges representing four categories of issues namely infrastructure, lecturers’ online assessment literacy, language learners’ commitment and integrity and absence of specific implementation guidelines for online assessments.The findings also indicate that specific online language assessment guideline or framework is deemed necessary to ensure best educational practices are applied to ensure attainment of course and programme outcomes.
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74
Challenges in Implementing Online Language Assessment-A Critical
Reflection of Issues faced amidst Covid-19 Pandemic
Norkhairi Ahmad1, Ina Suryani Ab Rahim2 and Salawati Ahmad3
1Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France Institute, {no rkh airi@unikledu.my}
2Universiti Malaysia P erlis, {inasuryani@unimap.edu.my}
3Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, {salawati@uthm.edu.my}
ABSTRACT
Over the years many literature on language
assessment continue to highlight a myriad of issues
and challenges.The delivery of tertiary language
courses including their assessments components
were put to the test during the recent outbreak of
Covid-19 pandemic that necessitates total shift to
online mode from the previously conventional or
partially online. Due to this circumstance, this
paper aims to identify the challenges faced by
language lecturers in administering assessment in
the online mode and the need to plan good
mitigation strategies. Qualitative data was elicited
from twenty one key language lecturers as
purposive samplings from eleven public
universities. Based on basic Delphi approach, they
were grouped according to three expertise domains
namely online language learning, language
curriculum and pedagogy. The expert respondents
gave inputs and views to questions via structured
written interviews as well as follow-up oral
interviews. Emerging themes from the qualitative
responses point towards ten challenges representing
four categories of issues namely infrastructure,
lecturers’ online assessment literacy, language
learners’ commitment and integrity and absence of
specific implementation guidelines for online
assessments.The findings also indicate that specific
online language assessment guidelines and
framework is deemed necessary to ensure best
educational practices are applied to ensure
attainment of course and programme outcomes.
Keywords: online assessment, literacy, language
courses, challenges during pandemic
I INTRODUCTION
The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic brought about
education challenges to the routine physical face to
face teaching and learning processes due to closure
of institutions, movement controls and lock-downs.
Although this phenomenon has been described as a
disruption or crisis situation, some see this as the big
push for serious technology integration and full on-
line learning adoption (Li & Lalani, 2020). The
effort to resort to digital learning via online mode
and to substitute physical face to face learning
sessions with online learning have been described as
desperate damage control effort, crisis management
measures and act of innovations to mitigate new
arising challenge. Among the crucial ar ea affected is
the administration of assessments which have been
predominantly delivered via pen and paper, sit-down
conventional mode and in particular the summative
assessment (Cancino & Capredoni, 2020). As
language courses have slightly different nature i n
terms the learning outcomes to be attained, the need
to assess the required real time language
performance, abilities and range of skills, it poses
great challenges to educators in times of pandemic.
II PROBLEM STATEMENT
Demand for graduate with communicative
competence who master lingua franca such as the
English language has been escalating due to growth
in businesses and economic activities. Even
Malaysia Qualification Agency (MQA) and
professional bodies like the Malaysian Engineering
Accreditation Council (EAC) have emphasized
language mastery and communicative competence
as part of the 21st century educational goals to be
attained by undergraduates. This is pertinent as
academic grades churned out for undergraduates
through assessments will be the tipping point for
decisions on employment purposes by companies
(Ahmad Tajuddin, 2015). The emergence of digital
education and the increased emphasis for English
language mastery for 21st century employability and
career growth have yet to increase graduates’
attainment in this area. Studies have shown that the
lack of technical competencies, communicative
abilities an d skills to seek employment as the
primary reasons for many graduates to continue to
be jobless (Hanafi & Zaid, 2014). During trouble
times like the current Covid-19 pandemic, delivery
of academic programmes are severely affected and
eventually, the credibility of grades awarded for
undergraduates, the assessment procedures
undertaken and the overall quality of academic
programmes will be doubted by the community that
comprise parents, employers and the public in
general if graduates continue to display poor
attainment of the desired attributes.
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75
In relation to the above, Pill and Harding (2013)
describe literacy in language assessment as a
challenging range of abilities requiring language
instructors to acquire assessment knowledge,
construct items, assess items and engage in analysis
of data from language assessment. Similarly,
numerous studies have highlighted gaps in terms of
assessment belief s held by language educators’ as
compared to those of assessment professionals’
caused by insufficient assessment engagement, lack
of assessment exposure and limited training
opportunity (Sheehan & Munro, 2017). Many
language educators reported on their minimal roles
in assessment matters and this has reduced their
engagement within a wider range of assessment
undertakings such as i n developing an d
implementing assessments (Plakans & Gebril, 2016).
In addition, general perceptions on communication
has shifted d ue to the advent and availability of
technology for daily tasks as well as for essential
domain like higher education where learners have
preference for enhanced communication and
additional attention from instructors via digital
learning (Kotz, 2016). This is a prevalent trend as
21st century digital natives have higher data and
information consumption via daily communication
and engagement on digital platform and
technologies and the running of conventional
classroom teaching and learning is apparently not
adequate anymore in meeting the digital needs of
learners (Chan & Yee, 2009). All these seemingly
negative scenario becomes more critical within the
domain of digital learning as it requires a different
set of approaches for instructional purposes.
III RELEVANT LITERATURE
The rapid growth in demand for digital education
for learners via flipped and blended platform has
become a primary trend in higher education
(Norton & Cakitaki, 2016) along with active
transformations of institutional digital set up and
approaches in educational instructions (Becker,
Cummins & Freeman, 2017). Though student
assessment would influence the quality of the
graduates produce, many assessment strategies are
found to inhibit this intention (Adnan, Wan
Abdullah, Muda & Mohd Sallem, 2020). In the
context of present digital eduaction scenario,
Helfaya and O’ Neil (2019) observe that e-
assessment and e-feedback are not still well-
developed and widely used methods at many
universities. Moreover, many existing management
system for online learning have limitations in
supporting educational functions such as generating
assessment items which are well aligned to and
aptly gauge t h e target course learning outcomes of
academic courses (O’ Sitthisak, Gilbert & Davis,
2008).
Higher institutions which are not fully embracing
this digital transformation will not be well
positioned to undertake technology adoption, and
integration and shift to digital and remote learning
from existing conventional teaching and learning
mode (Salmon, 2005). There is an apparent dearth
of studies conducted on educational practices of
teaching and learning utilised by higher education
personnel for academic programmes offered via
fully online or hybrid mode like flipped or blended
version (Montelongo & Eaton, 2019). Digital
learning via online education offer immense
potential and outcomes for higher education
fraternity like undergraduates, faculty member and
administrative staff in terms of avenue for
innovation and best practices (Montelongo, 2019).
IV METHODOLOGY
Data for this qualitative study based on purposive
sampling was elicited based on basic Delphi
approach that comprised three expertise grouping of
key language lecturers who are well versed in online
learning, langauge curriculum and language
pedagogy. A number of qualitative educational
research have incorporated the basic Delphi
approach where experienced personnel or experts
are identified and grouped according to domain
expertise and get to respond the data elicitation tools
for a specific t opic. Literature review sources and
initial interviews with five experts guided
formulation of the interview questions and protocols
as well as the choice of coding process and th e topic
and identification of themes. The transcribed
qualitative data was analysed thematically together
with member-checking and triangulation procedure
to verify their accuracy and validity. This was
followed by data presentation in the form of non-
linear diagrammes and matrix to assist easier
viewing and comprehension of the discovered
points. This also facilitated easier analysis of the
results juxtaposed with current literature on the
subject matter. A total of twenty one academicians
from the three expertise grouping responded to
written interviews via google form containing
structured questions and via follow-up oral
interviews.
V FINDINGS
This study provides essential insights into the
present scenario of how the rapid growth in 21st
century technological advancements impacts higher
education in terms of digital teaching an d lear ning
implementation. This is in line with the surge in
preference for interactive online education among
the present millenials who are considered as digital
natives. This echoes the study by Killen, Beetham
and Knight (2017) that educational institutions need
Knowledge Management International Conference (KMICe) 2021, 1 February 2021
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to essentially cultivate and work towards
establishing proper infrastructure, responsive
policies and positive culture that complement and
spur effective digital practices.
Twenty one key language academicians from eleven
public universities f orm ed the three expert groups
comprising 14 males and 7 females, participated in
this study. The Language Curriculum group
averages 22.4 years in work experience, followed by
the Online Learning group with 18.3 years and the
Language Pedagogy group with 19.6 years. These
respondents also hold important designations at their
institutions such as Deans, Deputy Deans, Head of
Programmes, Head of Units, Coordinators and
Resource Person. Fourteen are holders of PhDs
while seven academicians have Masters
qualifications.
Table 1. Respondents’ Demographic Inf ormation
The findings from this study reveal that the
previously partially recommended formative online
language assessment had to be done full-swin g i n
online mode due to the Covid-19 scen ario. E ven the
sit-in summative final examination had to be
transformed into a more flexible online version
language tasks. All these were done via university
based Learning Management System (LMS) along
with other synchronous online interaction tools that
have multiple functionalities like recording and
noting attendance. All expert respondents agreed
that the LMS and functionalities of the online
communication tools could not fully substitute the
personal touch and impact of conventional face to
face classroom assessment sessions. All of them
also concurred that existing LMS and commonly
available online tools are inadequate to replace face
to face assessment especially to gauge summative
productive skills which are real-time performance
based like oral responses, group interaction and
writing. Rather, they must be applied in combination
via proper selection and planning.
Table 2 Sample Responses and Themes
Expert
Sample Responses
Theme s
FZu
UniN1
Creativity in p lann ing,
conduc
ting and performing
assessment is l a c
king. the
ability to embed and weave
methods and sources from
various tools is a huge
advantage for instructors.
however, this is lack ing
nowadays
Lecturers
online
assessment
literacy
AAA
UniC2
Not exactly co herent. Pr o b a bly
due to no proper guidelines on
how the test should be
adm inister ed, which platform
to ‘park’ th e test fo r the
stu dents to sit f or, as well
as no proper way to monitor
the students from copying or
chea ting as they s it fo r the tes t
Lack of
implementation
guidelin es
MMo
UniC3
Questionable as we couldn't
control the students. We have
to co nsider many as pects. First
wheth er to limit the time in
order to ensure they do the
questions themselves. At the
same time, we need to
con sider th e inter n e t
cons traints faced by them.
Learners’
readines s,
integrity,
valid ity and
reliab ility of
process
AAr
UniE1
when you are talking about
online ass essment, it will incu r
costing problem for example
certain do llars for an online
assessmen t platform that can
really observe the candidate in
terms of validity o f answering
the q ues tion s.
Costing and
qu ality of
on line tools
ZHa
UniC1
Introd uction to the
recomm ended tools and the
purpose they serve and how to
us e them ef fectively will be
useful.
The need for
specific
guidelin es
The assortments of relevant responses above do not
paint a rosy picture on the state of affairs of online
learning and online language assessment at public
universities in Malaysia. Every single expert
respondent has touched on the crucial issue of
internet bandwidth, speed and stability to sustain the
online learning sessions. Each respondent also
acknowledged that they were aware of the equity
and disparity issues in terms of internet access for
the majority of their students who were at their
respective homes throughout the country. Cases of
disruptions and technical glitches to online lessons
Expert
Gro uping
Public Universities
North (N), Central
(C), East (E) & South
(S) R egions)
Designation
Online
Learning
6 Unis
6 Males
1 Female
MSu (UniN1), IMa
(UniN3) AAz, MRMa
(UniC2), MMo
(UniC3), AAr (UniE1)
NKH (UniC4)
6 PhDs and 1 MA
Dean, Resou rce
Person, Head of
Unit
18.3 years
average work
experience
Language
Curriculum
7 Unis
2 Males
5 Females
ISu (UniN1),
HDz (UniN2),ZHa
(UniC1), HHa(UniC4)
SOm (UniE2)
AAL(UniS2)
NKa(UniS1)
7 PhDs
Dean, Deputy
Dean, Head o f
Unit Head of
Program,
22.4 years
average work
experience
Language
Peda gogy
7 Unis
6 Males
1 Female
FZu (UniN1), MMus
(UniE1 ), AAA
(UniC2), MZO
(UniC3), AAM
(UniC4), NRa (UniS1),
NDa (UniS2)
1 PhD and 6MAs
Head of Unit,
Sen ior lecturers ,
Res ource Pers on
19.6 years
average work
experience
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experienced both by the respondents and their
students were also narrated.
The second pressing issue is the competency in
technology integration by language educators as
observed and experienced by the experts. The range
of familiarity, competency and ease of exploring the
full potential that the online tools and online
platform or management system offer, vary between
educators. Apart from the basic online mode for
lect u r e d elivery and interaction, the tentativeness of
the less ICT/Online savvy group became apparent
during this pandemic. Even for the online savvy
language educators, many of them narrated the
challenge of conducting assessment in terms of
planning, executing and monitoring the reliability
and validity of the processes particularly for the
summative assessments. For instance, identifying
the suitable and balanced assessment tools for the
specific language skills be it receptive or productive
skills was quite challenging due to issues of tools
availability, assessment literacy, online literacy and
internet access.
Figure 1. Challenges in online language assessment.
Four categories of issues could be detected from the
list of ten challenges that emerged from the
qualitative expert response.The first issue is
infrastructure that covers access to the internet,
bandwidth, speed and stability plus availability of
effective management system platform and
recommended tools. Second i s the issue of literacy
and technology competency to effectively plan
administer and monitor language assessment via
online mode. Third is the rate of participation and
commitment of the undergraduates in the online
learning and assessment process, as the p arty most
affected and most pressured to undergo the tertiary
education and attain the expected goals and
outcomes, within a less conducive condition. Fourth,
there is an absence of specific online language
assessment guideline that explicitly spell out best
practices, mitigation strategies, alternative measures
and a host of tips for campus fraternities,
administrators, language educators and
undergraduates to be aware of and rely upon for
language assessments. Such guidelines should be
able to assist all parties such as less online savvy
lecturers to lessen time taken for preparing online
materials, improve adoption of technology in
classrooms and enhance learners to achieve the
intended learning outcomes of the language
courses.
Figure 2. Need f or Gu ideline/ Framework
The figure above captures the justifications and
reasons put forth by the experts respondents from
all the three groups for a specific online language
assessment guidelines and framework to be
developed and put in place.
Stake holders and higher education authorities were
also urged byt the expert respondents to be adept at
managing issues revolving around technology
acceptance in education such as literacy, access,
infrastructure and cost. Crucial attention must be
paid to the effort to develop guideline that
recommends effective implementation best practices
for online language assessments.
Findings from this study have high transferability
to other institutions with similar contextual set-ups
as they are relatable to the current realities of the
respective institution.The expert groupings have a
general consensus that online learning despite being
actively propagated to be the main stream practice
was not fully implemented in full-swing by
academicians until the outbreak of the Covid-19
pandemic that inevitably forced its use for teaching
and learning purposes.
Language
Assessment
Lecturers ’ ICT/apps literacy
Ensuring reliability &
validity of respons es
Inadequate to assess real-
time pro ductive sk ills
Trans ferring language m aterials into
online platform - time consuming
More for formative,
limited fo r sum mative
Hindrance due to paper
based audit process
Lack of comprehensive
framework/guideline of use
Inadeq uate availa bility of
su itable too ls for all s kills
Online
Language
Assessment
Guidelines
Ways to tailo r
ass essmen t to lear ners
Crucial steps & tips
for lecturers
Ensures assessment
reliab ility & validity
Enable wider scale implementation
Awarenes s on tools suitability
& their lifesp an of use
Exposure to co ntext o f
use and scenarios
Ensures best
practices in
implementation
Prov ides useful s uggestion s on tools
choi ces
Limited feedback generation
properties of tools/systems
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VI DISCUSSION
There is an increasing demand for quality graduates
for employment purposes that necessitates
assessments and grading done via online and web-
based platform to ensure their real competency is
properly gauged (M.Ilahi, Cheniti & Braham,
2013). Cancino and Capredoni (2020) believe on
the crucial need to expose learners to new
assessment tools from the beginning of any
programme to enable them to familiarize with
differences in terms of tasks and formats as well as
allowing them to adapt to the required new
strategies for attempting online assessment tasks.
Likewise, Phil and Harding (2013) believe that the
shift from convention al from paper assessments to
digital version could be challenging and not swift
for higher institutions that lack technology
adoption and not putting in place proper online
response systems for assessment purposes .
Despite the immense benefits generated f or
education as a result of technology adoption and
digital tools integration for learning purposes such
as for assessing learning attainment via web-based
or online mode, disparity and shortcoming could
still be detected between summative and formativ e
online assessment tools capability. In addition,
there is clear inadequacy in the provision of
detailed automated feedback and achievement
summary by learning management systems
(LMS), particularly for big scale and multiple tasks
(Cagliero, Farinetti & Baralis, 2017). Most
common is the inability of many online learning
tools and systems to automatically generate detailed
feedback or summaries for outcomes from online
assessment for quick learning input for learners and
most importantly for them to be able to follow the
recommendations that relate to their learning needs
(Killen, Beetham & Knight, 2017).
The current millennial generation who are digital
natives are sensitive to even small things from
digital media like the online layout of an online
instructions. Such minute details could affect their
perception on online item usability and may seem
difficult for them to follow and understanding what
was required from the task. Being users of learning
and assessment through online tools would come
naturally for this generation as their engagement
would be easily elicited as they are able to relate
behaviourally and cognitively to the digital
materials and platform they are familiar with. Thus,
they are more prepared to remember the lessons,
retrieve the information required and achieve the
intended learning (Cardoso, 2011). Such realities
were also captured by Buragohain (2020) who
reported that digital immigrant language instructors
need to be adept with the whole range of digital
necessities of th e millennial language learners who
are digital natives and develop competency to
apply 21st century digital tools in creating
interactive online language classroom sessions.
As such, Kent (2019) in his investigation of the
efficacy of online response tools for formative
assessment, emphasizes on the need to develop
teacher-interaction and peer-interaction techniques.
This will enable interactive and active learning
environment to be created where learners could feel
engaged and identify their gaps in online learning.
Due to current circumstances, there is also a
pressing need for a framework of use or guidelines
for implementation of online language assessment
that will empower language educators to effectively
plan and administer competence-based assessments
and adhere to principles of evidence based validity,
reliability and feedback (M.Ilahi, Cheniti &
Braham, 2013).
All key language lecturers as expert respondents for
this study have echoed similar observations and
views as depicted in the above scenario and cite d
literature. They pointed out realities and challenges
that require mitigation in the aspect of online
assessment literacy of educators, learners’
familiarity and readiness, lack of online assessment
implementation guidelines, internet access and
stability of internet infrastructure. Generally, all
the experts concur that online learning as a whole is
not fully embraced by the higher education
community as it has not yet become a culture.
VII CONCLUSION
This findings from this study are significant in
providing insights into the state of affairs of the
online delivery academic courses at universities.
Understanding the nature of online language
assessment challenges highlighted by this study will
pave the way for mitigation measures and lay
smooth path in developing effective online language
assessment implementation strategies. The Covid-19
pandemic serves as a good wake-up call and has
unearthed a whole range of inadequacies that must
be addressed. This study also highlights
justifications for developing explicit framework or
guidelines for best practices in online language
assessments to uphold validity and reliability
principles and best practices. Such measure is
crucial in ascertaining that the grades awarded truly
reflects undergraduates’ learning attainment and
mastery of the languages that they learn.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge all academicians
who supported this study via their participation and
input.
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... learning activities and assessment in order to attain the expected outcomes of ESAP courses . Furthermore, some students have reported difficulties in recognizing thoughts that need to be shared, worries on ideas being considered irrelevant and fears of being rejected by other members of the group (Vonderwell, Liang & Alderman, 2007). In addition, Ahmad, Ab. Rahim and Ahmad (2021) highlighted the reality that albeit the emergence of 21 st century digital education and increased emphasis for English mastery for employability and career, students' attainment of communication skills have yet to increase. ...
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