Forced introduction of e-assessment during COVID-19 pandemic: How did the students feel about that? (Sofia University case)

Abstract

The ubiquity of technology in the last decades has transformed education, accelerated the development of e-learning and has placed a lot of challenges to the higher education institutions in terms of students' assessment. These potential challenges of e-assessment slowed down the process of its proliferation to some extent but the COVID-19 pandemic forced the introduction of e-assessment in all educational stages, and in most cases institutions had to "switch, almost overnight, to online teaching and virtual education"[1]. This study aims to identify the impact of students' experience from one of the leading Bulgarian universities-Sofia University (SU) in forced introduction of e-assessment on their views and perspectives about it. The research method is an online survey, conducted at the end of the semester in academic year 2019/2020 and students from all 16 SU faculties were invited to take part. The paper focuses on three main aspects-1) students experience in e-assessment during pandemic; 2) students' views on e-assessment; and 3) the impact of their experience in e-assessment on their views. Findings from data analysis reveal that students were mostly summative assessed through course works (artefacts) submissions and tests, and the use of different types of formative assessment was very limited. The technologies utilised for the assessments by academic staff were also very deficient. These results demonstrate that most of the teachers transferred their experience and approaches to students' assessment from face-to-face to the online environment without adaptation and modification to specifics of the latter. This decreased to a certain extent the trust of students in e-assessment and reinforced their preference to face-to-face assessment. Conclusions impose the need for advanced training of academic staff in the field of e-learning and e-assessment design.