Online assessment vs Traditional assessment: perception of medical teachers in a tertiary level teaching hospital in South India

Abstract

The use of e-assessment has increased in higher education over the last two decades, which means that medical teachers are required to work by adapting to the increasing usage of technology. Because of the automated marking and feedback, online tests are viewed as highly efficient, fast, and reliable. The online assessment was not used for formative/summative assessment except in fewer renowned institutions in our country. But it had increased recently in all educational setups because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to know the perception of preclinical faculty on the advantages and disadvantages of using online internal assessment when compared to the traditional method. A cross-sectional survey was done using Google form with standard and validated questionnaires with Likert scale scoring (1- strongly disagree, 2- disagree, 3- neutral, 4- agree, and 5- strongly agree) for preclinical medical faculty to assess their perception of online vs traditional assessment method. The result was analyzed by descriptive statistics. Out of 45 responses, only 50% were competent to handle the online assessment, but the other 50% were confident though not competent due to lack of training. 96% of faculty agreed that paper correction load is reduced in online aptitude tests. But nearly 40% agreed that aptitude tests can assess only the student’s knowledge in the cognitive domain. In our study, we found that not all the faculty preferred to switch from the conventional method. However, they show their willingness to adopt a blended teaching and assessment method.