Tag: COVID-19

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Online Teaching & Learning in Higher Education During COVID-19 & Beyond: Pitfalls & Opportunities for Access & Equity

Like so many other countries across the globe, higher education institutions in South Africa were forced to reckon with a rapid pivot to online teaching/learning in order to maintain operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 26 public universities in South Africa, 25 are residential institutions that did not allow distance education prior to 2014 (Czerniewicz et al., 2020).  This scramble to change modalities in 2020 came on the coattails of nationwide student protests from 2015-2017 during which typical campus activities and courses were repeatedly interrupted at some of the largest public institutions because of the #FeesMustFall movement, a student-led initiative boycotting swift, large, and prohibitive hikes in tuition costs instituted by the South African government. At the heart of the #FeesMustFall movement was attention to the fact that systemic racism and resource inequalities left historically marginalized students most unable to cope with the tuition increase. Unsurprisingly, the scope and scale of online teaching/learning suddenly required during the Pandemic only further accentuated the obvious issues of access and equity as reflected by university students in South Africa, particularly in regards to the digital divide among the South African student population.  When students had access to usual campus infrastructures, they were able to utilize tools like free Wi-Fi, libraries, and computer labs which reduced some level of disparity in regards to technology access (Swartz et al., 2018). When this access was taken away, many existing inequalities were made starkly visible, and students without expansive resource networks were left adrift. 

“Across the nation, the pandemic revealed historic (and mostly forgotten) fault lines, and as silence settled down upon buzzing cities and communities and we all came to a standstill, we were forced to hear the tectonic layers pushing and shoving against one another, tectonic layers of intergenerational inequalities, unheard and ignored for too long.”

Czerniewicz  et al., 2020, para. 14

This quote might just as easily be referring to the United States, especially in the weeks and months following the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020 and the ongoing discourse about racial tensions and inequalities embedded in American systems.  Indeed, the relative ‘silence’ ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the consistent hum of existing inequalities imbedded within communities, throughout countries, and across international borders which significantly impacted the ability for students at all levels to continue in their learning (or not).

Internet users in 2012 as a percentage of a country’s population
Source: International Telecommunications Union.

In light of the socio-political factors influencing teaching/learning in COVID-19, Czerniewicz et al. (2020) set out to analyze how issues of equity and inequality played out in the pivot to online teaching/learning in South African higher education during the pandemic, and how these concerns might have implications or offer guidance for the educational enterprise post-pandemic. In this case study, nine themes on access & equity emerged which, almost certainly, will find echoes among educators and school administrators worldwide.  Some themes serve as cautions and highlight system failures, while some highlight the possibilities and opportunities afforded through online teaching/learning: 

  1. Inequalities Made Visible: the crisis made preexisting inequalities and infrastructure failures starkly visible; this included poorly-constructed pedagogies that previously failed to meet the varied and nuanced needs of real university students (as opposed to the disembodied ‘ideal’ student), crisis notwithstanding. 
  1. Imbedded in Context: the sudden shift to online teaching/learning took place within embedded contexts where gender, culture, race, geopolitical context, etc., played a part in a student’s lived experience; all influencing factors must be considered intersectionally in the learning environment, online or otherwise. 
  1. Multimodal Strategies: it became clear that in order to even come close to meeting student needs for remote learning, a ‘multimodal’ or ‘hyflex’ approach was required; this meant course content had to be highly accessible through multiple media formats, some of which were not digital. 
  1. Making a Plan: pre-existing emergency plans for instruction at both the institutional and instructional level are a necessity and must include provisions for unreliable electrical power or internet access. 
  1. Digital Literacy: student levels of digital literacy and capacity for effective navigation of e-learning tools cannot be assumed; neither can assumptions be made of the faculty/staff responsible for implementing digital learning tools. 
  1. Places of Learning: in lockdown, many students, faculty, & staff, no longer had a dedicated space to be able to engage in their scholastic duties. Students/faculty/staff were unevenly impacted and had to make substantially different sacrifices depending on their circumstances (e.g. parents with young children at home, students caring for elderly relatives, etc.) 
  1. Parity of Pedagogy: the crisis forced learning design to become more student-centered than ever before. Though there were certainly gaps and failings, instructors were re-thinking assessment strategies and intervention options in comprehensive ways.  
  1. Sectoral Stratification: similar to the first theme, the pandemic highlighted existing inequalities, this time at the institutional level.  Larger/smaller, urban/rural, ranked/not ranked universities all faced different kinds of obstacles. Historically advantaged institutions fared better in their emergency responses. 
  1. Social Responsibility in Higher Education: The boundaries between higher education and larger society are porous. Universities cannot pretend they are neutral when it comes to social and economic inequities. 

Perhaps central to each of these themes is a need for student-centered learning design and careful consideration for the extent to which stakeholders have access to internet and a suitable device.  The pandemic has shown the urgent need to teach and support student learning no matter where they live or what resources they personally possess (Correia, 2020).  In support of the third theme listed above (multimodal pedagogical strategies), Correia (2020) offers an array of concrete tools and strategies for low-bandwidth online teaching/learning that can help mitigate the impacts of the digital divide in digital education environments: 

  1. Start designing a course with three assumptions in mind:  1) The student may have limited bandwidth, data, or internet access with which to participate in the course 2) The student may be much less familiar with the technology being used than the instructor, and 3) They may not have access to tech equipment like cameras, printers, and scanners 
  1. Make frequent contact and learn about student accessibility needs. Consider the use of postal mail (with postage cost covered), landline phone calls, chat check-ins, and asynchronous video messages. 
  1. Consider how to incorporate a students’ informal learning and life experiences into course assignments and objectives; in other words, lean in to student learning that occurs offline.
  1. Use free resources and tools profusely. OER Commons is just one example of a public digital library of open educational resources. Bear in mind, however, that where assignments are concerned, internet access may bar frequent usage, even if the tool is free.  
  1. Utilize pre-recorded lectures and transcripts for students unable to join synchronous video conferences 
  1. Use audio recordings as educational resources (e.g. podcasts), as well as for instructor-student communication.  Audio recordings often result in fewer tech issues and use less bandwidth; they mitigate the need for a camera along with possible feelings of intrusion or shyness that cameras can bring. 
  1. Use alternative forms of assessment which may include portfolios, open book examinations, or discussion forums. 

Of course, COVID-19 did not usher in the dawn of online education.  The demand for digital education in its various forms has been growing steadily over the course of the last decade, even prior to the pandemic (Xie et al., 2020). It’s increase in popularity can largely be credited to the possibilities it provides for access and equity, including opportunities for flexibility, efficiency, the promotion of innovative and student-centered teaching strategies, access to varied (and often free) sources of information, access to global research and collaboration, and increased access/reduced costs for higher education, especially for students who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend a residential university (Xie et al., 2020). The comprehensive demands for remote teaching/learning during the pandemic has merely accelerated the adoption and acceptance of online teaching/learning in all kinds of educational settings, and it’s fair to assume that a certain level of online teaching/learning integration will define the “new normal” in education moving forward (Xie et al., 2020).  Educators and educational institutions, then, must be able to recognize the potential pitfalls for access and equity as it pertains to digital education.  To the extent that online teaching/learning is here to stay, educators can’t afford to ignore student needs and the ways online teaching/learning might be insufficient to meet them.  And yet, there remains significant potential. 

“[The pandemic] has brought into focus numerous examples of extraordinary resilience, networks and…unexpected alliances of collaboration and support, including inspiring creativity, examples of technology used for equity purposes and moments of optimism. …There is an opportunity in the moment for genuine equity-focused innovation, policymaking, provision and pedagogy.” 

Czerniewicz et al., 2020

References 

Correia, A. (2020).  Healing the digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Quarterly Review of Distance Education 21(1), 13-21. https://ezproxy.spu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=a9h&AN=146721348&site=ehost-live 

Czerniewicz, L., Agherdien, N., Badenhorst, J., Belluigi, D., Chambers, T., Chili, M., de Villiers, M., Felix, W., Gachago, D., Gokhale, C., Ivala, E., Kramm, N., Madiba, M., Mistri, G., Mgqwashu, E., Pallitt, N., Prinsloo, P., Solomon, L., … Wissing, G. (2020). A wake-up call: Equity, inequality and Covid-19 emergency remote teaching and learning. Postdigital Science and Education 2, 946–967. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00187-4 

Swartz, B.C., Gachago, D. & Belford, C. (2018). To care or not to care – reflections on the ethics of blended learning in times of disruption. South African Journal of Higher Education 32(6), 49‒64. 

Xie, X., Siau, K., & Nah, F. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic – online education in the new normal and the next normal.  Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research 22(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/15228053.2020.1824884 

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Resilient pedagogy: The professional development opportunity educators need now more than ever

Resilient pedagogy is an emerging instructional philosophy with extremely timely implications for this current moment in education and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Though facets of resilient pedagogy have long been practiced by educators in the form of classroom differentiation, and though other frameworks like Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) inform resilient pedagogy, Rebecca Quintana and her colleagues at the University of Michigan have attempted to define a more expansive type of differentiation by building upon these approaches to instructional design and extending beyond them, bringing to the forefront the need for instructors to be agile and intentional in all educational contexts, but especially in moments of crisis and change.  More than just a fancy synonym for differentiation, resilient pedagogy can be defined as “…the ability to facilitate learning experiences that are designed to be adaptable to fluctuating conditions and disruptions” (Quintana & DeVaney, 2020, para. 8). Resilient teaching is an approach that “take[s] into account how a dynamic learning context may require new forms of interactions between teachers, students, content, and tools” (Quintana & DeVaney, 2020, para. 8), and those who practice resilient pedagogy have the capacity to rethink the design of learning experiences based on a nuanced understanding of context (Quintana & DeVaney, 2020).  The key to resilient teaching is a focus on the interactions that facilitate learning, including all the ways that teachers and students need to communicate with one another and actively engage with the learning material (Hart-Davidson, 2020). 

“Teachers often plan carefully for delivering content…but when it comes to planning interactions, we can easily take this very important component of learning for granted.”

(Hart-Davidson, 2020, para. 5)

In 2020, Rebecca Quintana and the University of Michigan released a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) via Coursera titled “Resilient Teaching Through Times of Crisis & Change.”  The MOOC is available in a free, open access format and offers a flexible learning structure which makes it accessible to any educator wanting to engage with the topic. The registration process is simple, and as an asynchronous online learning experience, there are no time constraints on when a participant must register or when a participant must complete the course.  Though the course is aimed at educators who may need to rethink how they teach in the immediate or near future due to the ever-changing circumstances of the pandemic, the course creators “…expect it will remain relevant to instructors who are faced with disruptions and change to their teaching for any number of reasons and must quickly adapt their course designs” (Quintana, 2020). Furthermore, though this MOOC course is especially relevant to the higher education environment, the principles of resilient pedagogy can absolutely be applied in any type of classroom by any type of educator.

Interested educators may engage with the course casually by reviewing videos (thoughtfully ‘chunked’ into appropriately consumable lengths) and reading materials in whatever order and pacing–and to whatever depth–feels pertinent to their needs.  They can choose to purchase the full course and engage in all aspects of the learning experience, including submitting assignments and completing checks for understanding.  In this format, participants can receive a course completion certificate at the end.  This type of engagement may be especially helpful if participating in the course alongside colleagues in a more formal professional development venture.  My personal engagement has been decidedly less formal.

The course content focuses on three key components of resilient pedagogy: designing for extensibility, designing for flexibility, and designing for redundancy.  This three-principle framework helps flesh out the meaning and potential of resilient pedagogy while also serving as a practical guide to course design.

  1. Designing for Extensibility means that a course is designed in such a way that it has a clearly defined purpose and essential, unaltered learning goals, and yet the basic essence of the course content can be extended with new capabilities and functionality as needed.  This may involve the introduction of new tools or a change in format, moving fluidly from synchronous to asynchronous modalities, etc.  
  2. Designing for Flexibility means that a course is designed to respond to the individual needs of learners within a changing learning environment.  In a nod to the UDL framework, designing for flexibility means that a course is structured to meet a variety of student needs and learning styles, even before knowing specific individuals in a given class.  Flexibility will require a learner-centered approach with multiple means of engagement/expression and considerations for student needs which may arise within variable class sizes and modalities.  A course designed for flexibility will also allow instructor expectations and assessments to flex in response to these needs.
  3. Designing for Redundancy, simply put, means having contingency plans in place. Designing for redundancy asks instructors to analyze a course design for possible vulnerabilities.  For example, how will students accustomed to synchronous virtual meetings be given the opportunity to engage in course activities if their internet access becomes unpredictable?  In this design approach, instructors look for alternative ways of accomplishing goals with the hope of eliminating “single points of failure.” This is, of course, incredibly important when learning is situated in a time of crisis or emergency.

These three principles of resilient pedagogy do not stand alone. Rather, they inform one another and will naturally overlap in the instructional design process.  The MOOC contains excellent examples and practical applications of extensibility, flexibility, and redundancy throughout, but Rebecca Quintana and her team aren’t the only academics talking about resilient pedagogy, and examples of resilient pedagogy implemented during the pandemic can be found outside the MOOC.  For the reader who might be thinking about resilient pedagogy for the first time, here are a few examples of what resilient pedagogy may look like in practice:

  • Educators on a staggered schedule or a hybrid return-to-school plan may put together an in-person and virtual lesson plan that can be running at the same time on the same day with students engaging with the same content in two different modalities (Watson, 2020).
  • Instructors may create a spreadsheet for a course which helps track various contingencies and needed adjustments for various modalities: in person, hybrid or hyflex, and fully remote (Quintana, 2020).
  • Resilient pedagogy involves reducing complexity in any way possible.  This can look like establishing a predictable weekly pattern for remote students, having fewer due dates, simplifying assignments, etc. (Tange, 2020). Resilient pedagogy in practice means educators can scale up or down as needed according to student needs, understanding that crisis situations almost always call for some sort of scaling down. It’s OK to pair a course down to its most essential elements.
  • Resilient pedagogy requires an emphasis on feedback and interactions vs. assignments and grading.  Grading fewer assignments while also providing more opportunities for ongoing feedback increases the opportunity for interactions between instructors and students while also lowering the stakes for all parties (Watson, 2020).  It also keeps educators from getting stuck trying to stick a “square-pegged” assignment or assessment into a “round hole” of a specific digital tool, modality, or crisis context, simply because this assignment has always been done as part of the course in the past. 
  • As another way to emphasize the importance of interactions within a course, resilient pedagogy prioritizes small group interactions over and above large group instruction (Watson, 2020).  This can take many forms in both synchronous and asynchronous, online and in-person formats.
  • Resilient pedagogy requires educators to consider the use of digital tools carefully within their course design. If, for example, they are using a particular tool on which the success of their students rests, instructors may dedicate time within their learning activities to help students learn how to use that technology and not make assumptions about their students’ digital literacy (Gardiner, 2020).

Though the application of resilient pedagogy may feel particularly prescient in this current moment of crisis, resilient teaching will benefit students and instructors in all circumstances in the long run, regardless of the circumstance.  At the end of the day, resilient teaching forces instructors to examine student engagement carefully and intentionally and develop a student-centered mindset.  It also helps instructors design a dynamic course once, so that they’re using their time and efforts efficiently and making their courses as resistant to disruption as possible (Gardiner, 2020).  Resilience has been an oft-discussed trait that ‘successful’ students possess, but perhaps it’s time to shift that focus on to educators.  Successful educators must be resilient themselves.  It’s not only necessary for this moment, it’s the right thing to do for students in all contexts moving forward, and the “Resilient Teaching Through Times of Crisis & Change MOOC is a great place to start.

“If it seems like resilient pedagogy is in line with calls for us all to be making learning more inclusive and accessible, it certainly is.”

(Hart-Davidson, 2020, para. 17) 

References:

Gardiner, E. (2020, June 25). Resilient Pedagogy for the Age of Disruption: A Conversation with Josh Eyler. Top Hat. https://tophat.com/blog/resilient-pedagogy-for-the-age-of-disruption-a-conversation-with-josh-eyler/

Hart-Davidson, B. (2020, April 6). Imagining a resilient pedagogy. Medium. https://cal.msu.edu/news/imagining-a-resilient-pedagogy/

Kaston Tange, A. (2020, June 8). Thinking about the humanities. https://andreakastontange.com/teaching/resilient-design-for-remote-teaching-and-learning/

Quintana, R. (2020).  Resilient teaching through times of crisis and change [MOOC]. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/resilient-teaching-through-times-of-crisis 

Quintana, R., & DeVaney, J. (2020, May 27). Laying the foundation for a resilient teaching community. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/learning-innovation/laying-foundation-resilient-teaching-community 

Watson, A. (2020). Flexible, resilient pedagogy: How to plan activities that work for in-person, remote, AND hybrid instruction.  Truth for Teachers. https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/resilient-pedagogy-hybrid-instruction-remote-learning-activities/

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Global research collaboration and the pandemic: How COVID-19 has accelerated networked learning in higher education

Image courtesy of https://www.polyu.edu.hk/web/en/about_polyu/global_network/

According to the National Science Foundation (2019), one out of every five academic research articles are written by authors hailing from more than one country. This fact suggests that the value of international research collaboration was recognized and sought out well in advance of the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, but perhaps it’s only just the beginning.  Reasons to pursue global collaboration in higher education include reaching wider audiences and increasing the impact of published research, reducing bias and broadening perspectives with a diverse research team, and leveraging the ability to offset domestic skill shortages by collaborating across national borders (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  Networked learning in higher education can also encourage new levels of creativity and innovation in all kinds of disciplines, and it expands the potential for authentic global and cultural learning experiences in an increasingly connected world (Cronina et al., 2016).  These benefits apply to even the most scholastically “productive” countries like the USA and China (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  That said, understanding that international collaboration in higher education was valued–at least to a certain extent–prior to 2020, I am curious to explore how recent changes in technology and cultural shifts in academia during the pandemic have worked in tandem to build upon this trend, potentially accelerating technology’s impact on global research collaboration and cooperation into the future.

With the onset of COVID-19, scientists and researchers from every corner of the world scrambled to understand the virus and seek a cure. Information sharing among countries quickly became essential, especially for those countries that were hardest hit early on (Lee & Haupt, 2020).  Though socio-political tensions between countries–and even domestically within countries–were hardly in short supply in 2020, the demands of the pandemic shifted priorities such that many international corporations and research institutions began working together rather than competing with each other to produce a vaccine, and large-scale exchanges of medical and public health data, including possible solutions, was (and still is) shared internationally using digital and online tools (Buitendijk, 2020).

When it comes to information sharing, one way of measuring an increase in international collaboration is through a country’s participation in open access publication platforms.  Open access journals and publication platforms remove barriers for accessing information and research since they do not require payment or subscriptions in order to be read and cited.  Sometimes the cost of publishing is absorbed by these open access platforms through philanthropic efforts, sponsorship, or submission fees paid by the authors, etc., but the bottom line is that there’s typically little profit to be made by academics, researchers, and authors who publish in open access platforms. Thus, the motivation for researchers–either individually or nationally speaking–to publish in an open access platform is often more altruistic in nature, placing higher priority on the sharing of information than any potential gains or notoriety received from publishing, monetary or otherwise.  According to Lee & Haupt (2020), countries with lower GDP who were more severely affected by the pandemic were the most likely to increase participation in open access publishing and international research efforts. It would follow that decisions to increase open-access participation was also meant to illicit reciprocal behavior from other countries, and indeed, the majority of all “knowledge producing” countries increased their participation in open access publishing during the pandemic: “For each of the top 25 COVID-19 research-producing countries, there was a noticeably higher proportion of open-access articles on COVID-19 than during the past 5 years and on non-COVID-19…publications during the same period” (Lee & Haupt, 2020, para. 26).

In addition to the public health concerns that have motivated scholars and researchers to participate in more information sharing during the pandemic, it must also be said that the act of collaboration has gotten exponentially easier in recent years.  In a 2010 publication, Iorio et al. discuss the use of digital tools designed to facilitate international collaboration and interaction amongst higher education scholars.  In this specific case, domestic teams in five different areas of the world were attempting to complete an integrative design task which required synchronous virtual meetings, a way to exchange ideas, brainstorm, and problem solve in real time (though not necessarily synchronously), as well as an appropriate digital repository for their work (building plans, model mapping, cost estimates, etc.) which could be accessed frequently by the members of each team in their respective countries.  The article focused its efforts on reviewing the virtual reality platform Second Life. To me, Second Life now feels woefully insufficient as a project management platform, at least according to 2021 standards, but at the time, the authors found Second Life to be a comparatively “appealing choice” due to its options for customization and tools such as virtual white boards, voice and text chat, scheduling agents, etc., all in one centralized, virtual location. Second Life aside, the authors noted that “To date, very few technological options exist that provide all of [the needed] functionalities to distributed networks. Commonly used tools such as email, instant messaging, and teleconferencing do not provide a framework for interaction that fully satisfies the demands of geographically distributed projects.”

Sample of a virtual meeting room in Second Life; image courtesy of https://marketplace.secondlife.com

In short, Second Life was more or less the best this research team could find in 2010. Since then, there’s been a massive influx of virtual project management/collaboration platforms introduced to the market.  Consider the list below of some of the “big names” in collaboration software along with their launch dates:

This list represents nine, powerhouse collaboration platforms, all of which rolled out between 2010 and 2020, and many of which depend heavily on the power and popularity of cloud storage or cloud computing (which was also expanding significantly during this time frame).  And please note: this list is hardly exhaustive.  There are many more out there (and counting!), and even the ones on this list are constantly being updated and expanded.  Each platform or collection of tools on this list boasts its own strengths and weaknesses (the exploration of which is not the point of this post), but there can be no doubt that no matter the platform, it is easier to make the choice to communicate, collaborate, and innovate with people all over the world in 2021 than it was even ten years ago.  Of course, not only have the tools themselves gotten better, but the pandemic has accelerated digital tool adoption for purposes of collaboration at an extraordinary rate, popularizing already existing tools (e.g.. Zoom teleconferencing) in unprecedented ways, such that millions, if not billions, of students and professionals in myriads of settings worldwide are collaborating and problem solving virtually across distances in ways they were not one year ago.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into stark realization the fact that we need ‘global solutions to global challenges’ (Buitendijk et al, 2020) and that we need not relegate the phenomena of increased global collaboration in higher education to a particular moment in time.  Instead, we might view this as an opportunity to challenge the model of competition between higher education institutions and place lasting value on diversified bodies of knowledge production, dissemination, and consumption (Buitendijk et al, 2020).  We might also recognize that a philosophy of collaboration makes it possible for students and lecturers in all types of higher education settings to have more equal roles in creating content, sharing resources, and asking/answering important questions (Cronina et al., 2016).  As centers of research all over the world, universities have a crucial role to play in helping humans to better care for one another on a global scale, teaching us to become “more empathic, less competitive, and more networked in our research and educational activities” (Buitendijk, 2020).  Let us not lose the momentum of this moment to embrace a new norm in higher education, maintaining a sincere commitment to, and value of, community-minded research and collaboration across borders.

For further discussion on this topic, consider viewing this 60-minute webinar, “The impact of COVID-19 on University Research and International Collaborations” offered through the UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education. The webinar was recorded in August of 2020.

References:

Buitendijk, B., Ward, H., Shimshon, G., Sam, A., & Sharma, D. (2020). COVID-19: An opportunity to rethink global cooperation in higher education and research. BMJ Global Health. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002790

Cronina, C., Cochraneb, T.,  & Gordonc, A. (2016). Nurturing global collaboration and networked learning in higher education. Research in Learning Technology, 24. 

Iorio, J., Peschiera, G., Taylor, L., & Korpela, L. (2010). Factors impacting usage patterns of collaborative tools designed to support global virtual design project networks. Journal of Information Technology Design in Construction, 16, 209-230. https://itcon.org/papers/2011_14.content.08738.pdf

Lee, J., & Haupt, J. (2020). Scientific globalism during a global crisis: research collaboration and open access publications on COVID-19. Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00589-0


National Science Foundation (2019). Publications Output: U.S. Trends and International Comparisons. National Science Board: Science and Engineering Indicators. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20206/executive-summary

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Assessment in higher education during COVID-19 and beyond: Will it ever be the same?

Ridofranz/Getty Images

Perhaps the word “unprecedented” has been overused in recent months, but it consistently seems to be the most fitting word to express the seismic shifts in all areas of life that have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. As K-12 and higher education institutions worldwide have grappled with rapid pivots to online teaching and learning (and have continued in these blended and fully remote modalities for much longer than anticipated), academics are now taking a moment to reflect on the past year and its lasting implications for the world of education.  After all, as business theory would posit, disruption leads to innovation.

As an educator interested in online teaching/learning in post-secondary education, I would specifically like to explore how the last year of remote learning has impacted assessment strategies in higher education. How have widespread shifts to online teaching/learning impacted college students’ abilities to demonstrate competency in varied and student-driven ways?  Higher education is notoriously “old school,” and post-secondary classes are most frequently  lecture-based, led by instructors who are slower to adapt to more progressive, student-driven pedagogies.  And yet, as universities across the U.S. have made college and graduate school entrance exams like the SAT, ACT, and GRE optional for applicants in 2020 and 2021, a world beyond high stakes standardized testing can perhaps be imagined now more than ever.

Higher education instructors worldwide are already engaging in this issue and offering recommendations for ongoing change.  Perhaps surprisingly, some of the first publications I encountered came from educators in the graduate medical school community in both Australia and Pakistan. This was particularly striking since the medical sciences require lab work and clinical assessments which are particularly challenging to address in remote situations, as well as the fact that the medical sciences have long required high stakes testing at many stages of a medical student’s training.

According to Torda (2020), many medical school instructors in Australia have moved to lower the stakes of traditional written or multiple choice exams delivered online during the pandemic.  At the same time, a shift has been made to put more weight on multi-sourced feedback and student portfolios.  Where clinicals are concerned, simulation platforms such as the OSPIA (Online Simulated Patient Interaction and Assessment) system have been leveraged to bridge the gap until in-person clinicals may safely resume.  Another significant shift has been an emphasis on measuring a student’s ability to exhibit key professional skills, known in the medical community as “Entrustable Professional Activities,” over and above written examinations (Torda, 2020)..  In other words, students are being assessed on their ability to apply their learning in professionally relevant contexts.  Some of these skills include, but are not limited to, recommending and interpreting common diagnostic and screening tests, providing a (virtual) oral presentation of a clinical encounter, forming clinical questions and retrieving evidence to advance patient care, and collaborating with professional colleagues (Torda, 2020).  It was noted that, taken as a whole, these measures go a long way toward easing test anxiety and motivations to cheat in an otherwise high stakes, demanding field of study (Torda, 2020).

Additional examples of altered assessment strategies in the medical community have been reported in Pakistan.  Similar to Torda (2020), Khan and Jawaid (2020) posit that the pandemic has necessitated lowering the stakes of online-proctored, traditional exams.  The authors advocate for the use of student portfolios and video evidence of professional tasks completed, as well as synchronous open book exams.  The authors note that the aim of synchronous open book exams “…is to assess the ability of students to analyze and solve a problem, [and to] assess critical thinking and creativity. With open book exams taken in real time, the issues of cheating can be minimized.” (Khan & Jawaid, 2020, p. 109)

Changes in higher education assessment have also been reported in the United States. In June of 2020, Natasha Jankowski, in partnership with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), spearheaded a higher education survey meant to capture “a snapshot of assessment-related changes made during Spring 2020 in response to the sudden shift to remote instruction…” (Jankowski, 2020, p. 3). The survey included responses from faculty and staff at 624 different institutions, both public and private, with representation from all 50 states. The survey sought to record learning changes that higher education instructors were making, the impacts of those changes on assessment culture, and the role of student voice in the decisions (Jankowski, 2020).  The survey results showed that 97% of respondents made learning, instructional, and assessment changes of some kind during Spring 2020. Changes included modifying assignments and assessments, allowing flexibility in assignment deadlines, shifting to a pass/fail grading model, and modifying assessment reporting deadlines.  Though some respondents made changes that included accepting alternative assignments, this was a less often made change (Jankowski, 2020).  The survey also showed “…that assessment-related changes were undertaken to address student needs” (p. 3).  However, these changes may have had more to do with faculty/staff perception of student needs as opposed to action taken in direct response to student reports: “Information gathered from students was less likely to influence decisions on what to change, and students were less likely to be asked to identify their needs prior to decisions being made.” (p. 3) Consequently, it might be hard to define many of these changes in assessment as authentically “student-driven.” 

Nevertheless, it seems that the pandemic has disrupted “business as usual” in higher education such that many of the changes reported above may in fact have lasting impact with increasing opportunity for student voice to take a front seat in decision-making.  Dr. Funmi Amobi of Oregon State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning puts forth compelling arguments in favor of  “reimagining” assessment in higher education in light of the lessons we’ve learned in the pandemic (Amobi, 2020).  Amobi asserts that the radical move to remote instruction has “refocused attention on improving assessment practices to alleviate student stress and anxiety, emphasize learning, and redress inequities in student success.” (par. 2)  The author goes further and provides seven practical strategies for reimagining assessment in higher education.  Though these strategies can certainly be used effectively in remote learning environments, they are not only meant to solve problems related to online teaching and learning.  The strategies presented by Amobi (2020) should be taken seriously by all higher education instructors wanting to diversify their approach to assessments and create more student-centered learning experiences: 

  1. Use short, weekly quizzes to assess students formatively, and consider making the quizzes cumulative so that they may contribute to a summative assessment score.
  2. Ask for justification on multiple choice tests and grade the response instead of the answer.
  3. Create opportunities for collaborative, group tests.
  4. Have students construct exam questions themselves as a way of reviewing and exercising higher order thinking skills; then, include many of the student questions on the exam.
  5. Allow for notes or a study card and have students submit the prepared materials for credit along with the actual exam.
  6. Utilize practice tests.
  7. Spend time reviewing exams to address misunderstandings and improve future performance; consider giving credit for thoughtfully corrected exams where learning is evident.

In each of the reviewed publications, certain recurring themes were readily apparent: 1) it may be high time for colleges and universities to rethink the value of high stakes testing 2) varied assessment strategies allow for a more effective presentation of student learning 3) assessment is part of the overall learning process and should not be divorced from student voice 4) varied assessment strategies reduce test anxiety and the motivation to cheat (the ladder being oft-cited as a obstacle in online assessment). 

We must avoid the underlying assumption that more technology is needed in order to solve the problems that technology introduces.  In other words, as the pandemic continues to require extended engagement in remote teaching, higher education instructors must not assume that the only way to assess online is to find a way to virtually proctor the same exam that would normally be given in a physical classroom (Kumar, 2020).  Instead, educators at all levels may take this opportunity to make meaningful changes to their use of assessments, both now and into the future, thinking critically and creatively about how to best meet students where they’re at.  

References:

Amobi, F. (2020, November 12). Reimagining assessment in the pandemic era: Comprehensive assessment of student learning. OSU Center for Teaching and Learning. https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/osuteaching/2020/11/12/reimagining-assessment-in-the-pandemic-era-comprehensive-assessment-of-student-learning/

Jankowski, N. A. (2020). Assessment during a crisis: Responding to a global pandemic. National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment. https://public.uhcl.edu/education/centers-initiatives/planning-assessment/documents/niloa-covid-assessment-report.pdf

Khan, R. A. & Jawaid, M. (2020). Technology Enhanced Assessment (TEA) in COVID 19 Pandemic. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences 36, 108-110. 10.12669/pjms.36.COVID19-S4.2795

Kumar, R. (2020). Assessing higher education in the COVID-19 era.  Brock Education Journal 29(2), 37-4. https://journals.library.brocku.ca/brocked

Torda, A, (2020). How COVID‐19 has pushed us into a medical education revolution. Internal Medicine Journal 15(9), (1150-1153).  https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.14882

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