Using digital technology in transforming assessment in higher education institutions beyond COVID-19
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Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Creative education
Abstract
Purpose: This paper explores the dominant practices by integrating the use of technology to enhance assessment practices to better respond to the learning needs of the 21st century and the imperatives of the 4th industrial revolution. Objectives: 1) To explore how digital assessment could support diagnostic assessment in post-COVID-19 assessment practices. 2) To develop a digital assessment tool that supports the uptake and appropriate use of diverse digital assessment techniques. 3) To strengthen lecturers’ awareness of Constructive Alignment and implement it in digital-assisted assessment to promote the integration of graduate attributes in students. Method: The paper adopted the three elements of criticality, reflexivity, and praxis to address the use of digital technology to transform assessment of and for student learning within an institutional context. Criticality was used to provide a constructive reflection aimed at transforming the context; reflexivity enabled introspection and self-awareness regarding assessment as a pedagogical component that enhances student learning, and praxis helped to relate theories, concepts, and ideas to practice. The three elements informed the development of the model for enhancing and transforming digital enhancement assessment at the University of Namibia. Findings: The main findings revealed that higher education institutions could benefit from the forced COVID-19 migration to digitally-enabled assessment. The paper also revealed that for the digitally enabled assessment to be enhanced it requires collaboration between various institutional stakeholders. Conclusion: The paper concluded that there are opportunities for further collaboration among different institutional departments such as the faculties, quality assurance, innovation in learning and teaching, and research units, towards investigating, improving, and implementing new ways of assessing that are forward-looking and more supportive of student learning beyond their university careers
Description
The paper demonstrated fulfilling some of the Assessment Policy goals as well as the ideas learned from literature, through creating guidelines that help academics to implement digital assessment and to achieve integrative assessment. This has helped to fill theoretical and praxis gaps and opportunities for the role of technology in supporting assessment policy implementation. Technology is a tool for opening opportunities for accommodating new ways of curriculum implementation such as the mirroring of graduate attributes into the competency frameworks on the digital learning platform to be able to track student achievement thereof through assessment tasks. Finally, there are opportunities for further collaboration among different institutional departments such as the faculties, quality assurance, innovation in learning and teaching, and research units, towards investigating, improving, and implementing new ways of assessing that are forward-looking and more supportive of student learning beyond their university careers.
Keywords
Digital Assessment, Reflexivity, Praxis, Criticality, Constructive Alignment, Integrative Assessment