The year 2020 started with a new virus that crossed the lines between human and animal and caused a worldwide pandemic. In a matter of months, everything was affected, and the world as we knew it changed. Physical distancing rules, government-mandated masks, and shut-downs, as well as partial and total lockdowns, were taking place in almost every country. The health sector was affected, as well as trade, the economy, the environment, and, certainly, education. As of March 9th, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education (MoE) closed schools, universities, and colleges and moved learning completely online as Al-Samiri (2021, p.148) explains: “In a brief timeframe, the whole country began the transition to remote learning environments, whether it was televised on select channels or communicated through various online platforms: Telegram, Zoom, Teams, WebEx, and Blackboard”. King Abdulaziz University (KAU), specifically, moved learning from traditional classrooms on its various campuses to Blackboard®—an online Learning Management System (LMS) with both synchronous and asynchronous features. The university had to deliver its educational services to faculty and students in the spring term during this emergency crisis. Teachers and students alike had no choice in this matter, and many changes, including some to assessment practices, were necessary to survive the pandemic period without halting the educational process completely. In digital video games, this scenario parallels what is known as the ‘survival mode.’ In such games, the player must continue playing without dying in an uninterrupted session for as long as possible (the remainder of the semester) while the game (the learning environment, government regulations, and resources) provides players with increasingly difficult waves of challenges.
Despite the situation being far from ideal, “Saudi universities were naturally better prepared to transition to the online learning environment, as most Saudi universities had already implemented digital communication and learning tools” (Al-Samiri 2021, p.149). For several years prior to the pandemic, the university’s LMS, namely Blackboard®, was used for paid or executive online courses with external or distance learning students in some faculties, so faculty and staff had an awareness of it, and some might have used it, but not all had the same experience or level of knowledge of it and its features. “This software was not used extensively and served a supplementary role prior to the pandemic and its e-learning users are still discovering its features” (Al-Samiri 2021, p.149). For example, before the pandemic, the English Language Institute (ELI) at the university moved weekly assignments for Preparatory Programme Year (PYP) students online to Blackboard® and employed plagiarism detection software to writing assignments, but no tests or quizzes were taken on the system.
Online teaching started taking place via synchronous virtual classes using the university’s LMSs, mainly Blackboard® and Blackboard Ultra®, in the middle of the spring semester at KAU, which started on January 19th and ended on May 14th, 2020. However, for teachers and students in the Preparatory Year Program (PYP), the move to online teaching and learning was at the beginning of their fourth and final quarter. This study was designed after the MoE-mandated closures started, and data were collected between April and May 2020 towards the end of the second semester. As a descriptive mixed-method study, it was conducted on both male and female campuses at KAU, where undergraduate students of all levels, as well as academic staff with different rankings, participated by filling out online questionnaires for students and faculty, respectively. The questionnaires were designed to look at the online learning and teaching experience from three different angles or axes, namely (1) teaching and learning, (2) assessment, and (3) social and technical aspects. However, this paper will only focus on results from the second perspective, namely the assessment axis. The study is dedicated to exploring and answering the following questions:
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How did the university handle assessment online?
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What did students think of online assessment?
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What did faculty think of online assessment practices?
Theoretical and conceptual framework
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, learning has migrated online in most classrooms, colleges, and universities around the world. This has removed the alternative of combining informal learning with formal education as a choice from both students and teachers. Online learning and networking became the new standard, replacing conventional classroom teaching, and online testing has also been shifted. This happened with little preparation due to the new World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended physical distance rules that refused any group presence in a closed physical space, such as a classroom where the novel virus could spread. Hence, it was important “to make a transformational shift in [our] approach to teaching from one of disseminating information to one of creating learning environments where students [could] co-construct knowledge through interactions” (Vaughan 2010). This idea of co-constructing knowledge through student interaction informs the theoretical framework for this study, which is based on the premise that teachers need to encourage online learning communities among their students and allow them to make the connections between the different complex knowledge sets they encounter during their learning. Other learning theories do not do that as they “do not address learning that occurs out of people (i.e., learning that is stored and manipulated by technology)” unlike connectivism which states that “learning may reside in non-human appliances” (Siemens 2005).
Literature review
Research has shown that teachers are engaged in assessment-related tasks for as much as one-third to half of their time (Stiggins 1992). Practitioners define educational assessment as the process of gathering information about student learning and has several types, methodologies, and approaches. Nicol (2008) argues that “[a]ssessment is said to drive student learning: it can provide the motivation for learning (e.g., through the awarding of marks and grades), but it also enables learning to take place through the provision of feedback.” It can take the shape of formative assessment, which takes place during a course to aid student learning, inform teachers of their teaching practices, and provide feedback. Its aim is to promote learning. As Sardareh and Mohd Saad (2013, p.2493) put it, “[r]esearch suggests that formative assessment can improve students’ learning. However, the concept of formative assessment does not still represent a well-defined set of practices and this issue might affect its successful implementation in different contexts.” Educational assessment can also take the form of summative assessment, which takes place at the end of a learning course to measure student achievement. Its aim is to measure learning. Summative assessment “is a high stakes assessment with a final mark of achievement awarded describing the learning achieved against public criteria” (O’Shaughnessy and Joyce 2015, p.201). In other words, “[i]t is a powerful tool in the armory of the educator and therefore, deserves careful consideration. When exploring assessment, there are six key questions which should be addressed; why, what, how, when, where and who” (Harden and Laidlaw 2012). This literature review will cover three aspects: (1) online assessment, (2) online cheating opportunities, methods, and reasons; and finally, (3) teachers’ perspectives of online assessment.
Online assessment
Moving assessment from a physical classroom environment to an online one is challenging because “often the temptation or commonly used approach is to mirror face-to-face strategies and practices” (Bailey et al. 2015, p.112). However, technology can offer assessment much more in terms of access and support in its various stages, namely task design, assessment or interpretation, and feedback and grading, as Nicol (2008) explains:
Virtual Learning Environments (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle) can make it easier to present assessment tasks to students (e.g. to publish task requirements, the criteria to be used in assessment and the timings for submissions) and to track and record student progress (e.g. automatic time logging of activities and assignment submissions).
Bailey et al. (2015) carried out a study of 35 US university students through an online survey seeking their perceptions of 12 assessment strategies included in an online course. Then, they analyzed the data in terms of engagement, enjoyment, and knowledge, and an overwhelmingly positive experience was indicated: “The overarching implication for this study is that online professors and online instructional designers must move away from their comfort zones in pursuit of more innovative instructional strategies and assessments that will engage students,. ..” (ibid., p.123). Conversely, a qualitative study by Khan and Khan (2019) of 41 university science students in the United Arab Emirates exploring student perspectives on online assessment revealed that students resisted online high-stakes assessments and had apprehension towards them due to several factors, such as personal preferences, technological competency, layout, cheating and subject discipline, and finally, grading and feedback. The study revealed that students in the study appeared not to understand “the usefulness of the transition to online assessments.. . [however,] students saw some advantages to online assessments, in the form of colored diagrams, being able to edit answers, spell check. ..” (Khan and Khan 2019, p.673).
Online cheating: reasons, methods, and possible solutions
A major problem of assessment present in traditional classrooms is cheating, or academic dishonesty. It is a long-standing problem around the world; for example, in the US, “[t]he first comprehensive study of cheating at colleges and universities (5,000 students at almost 100 institutions) was completed in 1964. It found that 75 percent of the students had engaged in one form or another of academic dishonesty” (Chace 2012, p.12). King, Guyette, and Piotrowski (2009, p.4) define cheating as “a transgression against academic integrity which entails taking an unfair advantage that results in a misinterpretation of a student’s ability and grasp of knowledge.” Cheating is a form of academic dishonesty and can vary in severity and method. A Canadian study investigating 412 faculty members’ attitudes towards student violations of academic integrity revealed that just over half of the respondents felt it was getting worse and that their institutions’ unenforced policies are one reason behind this (MacLeod and Eaton 2020).
In their research, Baijnath and Singh (2019) looked at several studies from over 14 countries examining research on cheating practices in Higher Education (HE), perceptions, and possible solution to the phenomenon, and they recognized cheating as an international problem, with technology as one of the main enablers of cheating, and the fundamental role universities play in combating this issue on a societal level. Academic dishonesty is present in traditional classrooms, but when assessment is moved online, the problem becomes more complicated. In their study, King, Guyette, and Piotrowski (2009, p.7) found that “[c]learly, the majority of the students held the belief that more cheating occurs in online courses that it is easier to cheat in an online versus a traditional course.” Online academic integrity is a major concern that universities must address due to “the increased potential of cheating since the instructors have no control over the test setting, thus are not able to monitor students taking tests” (Palloff & Pratt, cited in Kayed 2013, p.20). Therefore, serious considerations need to be given to assessment before hosting an online course because there are real issues of concern, such as the type of assessment, academic integrity, and test security. Quizzes and tests have always been used in traditional classrooms but are inappropriate and insufficient in online environments, as “they do not reflect the true capabilities of online students” Kayed (2013, p.20). He further argues that “there is no assurance that the enrolled student is actually the one who is completing the work. Moreover, there is always the possibility that students intentionally or intentionally will plagiarise by not giving credit for others’ work words and/or ideas” (ibid.). Finally, Heberling (2002, p.1), when referring to online education, states that “[a] major reservation seems to center on the issue of cheating and plagiarism in the online classroom.”
McCabe and Treviño (1993, cited in McCabe et al. 2001) reviewed a decade of cheating in academia and found that a school lacking an honor code had lower levels of cheating behavior, while a school with an honor code had a higher level. To explain this, they took a closer look at the schools, where they realized that the school lacking in a formal honor code “had developed a culture that emphasized many of the elements found at code schools and encouraged academic integrity without instituting a formal code” (McCabe et al. 2001, p.224).
Moreover, Larkin et al. (2017) conducted a study on 30 US university graduate students to investigate whether it was easier to cheat online, how they perceived plagiarism, and what were their impressions of university policy regarding academic integrity. They found out that most students believed that cheating takes place during testing, that it is easier to cheat online, and that they had a clear idea of what constitutes plagiarism, although some believed that copying from the internet was acceptable. It also showed that some students do not feel “cut and paste” is a problem, and, thus, “it is imperative that instructors explicitly address what constitutes unacceptable plagiarism-related behaviors” (Larkin et al. 2017, p.6). King, Guyette, and Piotrowski (2009, p.2) state that “[p]erhaps the online environment or milieu contributes to the temptation to use dishonesty (in its many forms) due largely to the lack of oversight on the part of instructors.” Hence, implementing an honor code, for example, should be part of the teacher’s responsibility.
Just as reasons for cheating vary, so do the methods employed: “Today, lots of students cheat. They use the work of others, they buy essays. They plagiarize. Still, even though the Web makes cheating easier than ever before, and thus more prevalent, the phenomenon of cheating is nothing new. Students have been at it for a long time” (Chace 2012, p.23). According to Olt (2002), methods for cheating “can be divided into two: those that require an accomplice and those that do not.” Larkin et al. (2017), p.2) state that “[cheating] includes collaborating on homework, using ‘cheat sheets’ during an exam, and plagiarizing assignments. In more extreme forms, academic dishonesty involves students purchasing term papers from paper mills.” Cizek (1999) mentions several ways of cheating, including looking at another student’s exam paper, exposing a test paper for others to cheat from, passing an eraser with answers written on it between students, developing codes, such as tapping the floor to indicate a specific answer, using small papers to cheat, writing test information on the desk, and using banned resources in take-home exams—to name a few.
Clark and Lancaster (2006, cited in Eaton and Dressler 2019) constructed the term ‘contract cheating’ which is when a third party is involved and “include[s] essay mills, homework completion services and professional exam takers (impersonators) among others. All forms of contract cheating are considered academic dishonesty, negatively impacting student learning and assessment” (Eaton and Dressler 2019, p.4). Contract cheating “falls squarely within the category of intentional academic misconduct” (Ellis, Zucker and Randall, 2018, cited in Eaton and Dressler 2019, p.4 .) and is typically carried out (online and offline) without the knowledge or approval of the instructor by third parties for reasons such as money, loyalty, and friendship (ibid.). However, as argued by Olt (2002), “[d]istance. .. does not diminish the possibility of students cheating, with or without an accomplice, on online assessments.” According to Heberling (2002), “[t]he Internet made it very easy to cheat in any classroom setting (traditional or online). Students can cut and paste lengthy passages from multiple Internet sources and then splice them together for term papers. This cut and paste technology makes cheating so easy that the students get both lazy and sloppy.”
Finally, another method of cheating mentioned by Heberling (2002) is using ‘digital paper mills,’ where students can buy written papers, sometimes even for free, through websites advertising revenue. He argues that these mills are a problem for both traditional and online classrooms; however, if submitted online, they are easier to detect than if they were handed in by hand in the classroom.
The internet and technology might have increased the temptation to cheat; however, on the positive side, there are tools to help combat online plagiarism, which “allow the instructor to search and compare large portions of a student’s paper with material available on the Internet” (Heberling 2002). For example, on Blackboard®—the LMS used by KAU during the lockdown—if the instructor enables the SafeAssign tool, then any submission by the student would be analyzed against the institutional database and the internet, which makes it easier to detect plagiarism by producing an originality report providing the original sources of students’ work. It supports several languages, including Arabic and “uses algorithms that make decisions about the originality of the submitted text. The algorithms consider word frequency, sentence structure, and other linguistic characteristics” (Language Support | Blackboard Help 2021). Heberling (2002) argues that, “[a]s a deterrent, it might be worthwhile to let students know that the Internet can (and will) be used to combat plagiarism. .. [and that it] is unacceptable[,] and severe consequences up to and including expulsion await those students who wish to test the policy.” He also adds that the administration should stand by faculty who impose these ethical standards of academic integrity and work together toward minimizing cheating and plagiarism (Heberling 2002) in both traditional and online learning.
In addition, to overcome these issues of concern, Kayed (2013) suggests that online teachers should devise further safeguards to ensure integrity, such as the use of multiple assessment techniques, designing online take-home exams where students’ knowledge rather information recollection is tested, using various software to detect plagiarism, and arranging controlled exams sittings at the university or a common location. However, this final solution is not feasible nor recommended in times of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent lockdowns and government-mandated rules for social distancing.
Online assessment: teachers’ perspectives
Educational assessment is usually divided into two approaches: summative and formative, where summative assessment measures student achievement at the end of a course, or a semester, usually for the purpose of writing a report or awarding a grade (Black and Wiliam 1998) and formative assessment is perceived as a diagnostic tool to provide feedback during the learning process and is “aligned with constructivist-based teaching approach which involves active learning activities such as open-ended problems, observations, interviews, writing samples, exhibitions, and portfolios,” as argued by Sulaiman et al. (2019, p.426). In their study of teachers’ perceptions of assessment and alternative assessment in the classroom, Sulaiman et al. (2019, p.430) concluded that “[t]o assess students’ knowledge and skills, teachers need to implement several assessment instruments such as writing test, project, assignment, simulation, portfolio, journal, exhibition, observation, interview, oral exam, and peers evaluation.” Alvarez et al. (2009, p.322) argue that “teaching and learning in virtual environments imply making changes to the organization of teaching and, subsequently, a change in the teacher functions” and that “[o]nline teaching and learning requirements are not limited only to a set of knowledge and experience; the challenges a teacher faces are linked closely to the particularities of interacting and communicating online”. These teacher roles expand because “[i]nstructors can no longer depend on different handwriting, a change in ink color, or the detection of eraser marks on an assessment as evidence that a student has changed answers after having taken the assessment” Olt (2002) and they need more training to be able to carry out assessment successfully and detect cheating online in other ways. On the contrary, data collected by Mellar et al. (2018) in an exploratory study at two universities, one in Turkey and one in Bulgaria, from three groups of participants (administrators, teachers, and students) to find common views and differences between traditional and online contexts revealed that teachers’ opinions across all contexts were comparable, and differences were due to reluctance to depart from an established, secure, and large-scale assessment system.
In her study conducted on 53 prospective and 47 practicing English language teachers to explore how teachers conceive language assessment using metaphors and whether these conceptions differ according to teaching experience, Sahinkarakas (2012, p.1787) argues that “[f]or assessment to have an impact on student achievement, teachers need to see [it] as an integral part of the instructional process rather than as an evaluation device to determine students’ grades.” Her findings show that although high-stakes tests are used, teachers perceive assessment as a formative tool to enhance learning and value its contribution to improving instruction. Furthermore, teaching experience plays a minor role in their conceptions. Despite her study not being about online assessment, it clearly shows the importance of formative assessment, which was what the MoE focused on regarding grades during the pandemic.
A study by McCabe (1993, cited in McCabe et al. 2001, p.225) reinforced some student views that many faculty members do not take cases of academic dishonesty seriously: “For example, more than half of the noncode faculty reported that their most likely reaction to an incident of cheating would be failure on the test or assignment involved (39%), a simple warning (9%), various penalties less than test or assignment failure (7%), or nothing (1%).” Hence, faculty members tend to deal with cheating instances themselves without institutional interference, either because they do not wish to deal with the issue or fear a lack of support from their institutions, which becomes harder in an online environment. As McLeod and Eaton (2020, p.357) explain, “[t]herein lies the paradox of faculty attitudes towards dealing with academic dishonesty: most faculty members report that it is one of their key responsibilities, yet they often avoid confronting it.” Chace (2012) explains:
Some teachers know when a student's work is fraudulent but elect to do nothing. It takes time, and time is expensive; bringing a student before a campus judicial council is also labor intensive, and the outcome is unpredictable; students or their parents can retain attorneys to fight the charges and endlessly complicate the procedure; administrators cannot be counted on to back up professors making accusations. Professors like the elevation of teaching but not the grubby business of prosecuting.