Learning assessment challenges from students and faculty perception in times of COVID-19: A case study

Abstract

A mixed-method study about the perception of students and faculty around learning assessment practices was conducted in a multicampus competency-based approached Mexican private university. The objective was getting new knowledge about higher education community perception around learning assessment practices, learning outcomes production and how authentic assessment was driven while working on different modalities during the pandemic: remote learning, synchronous hybrid learning, alternate hybrid learning, and on-site modality. A questionnaire, and an interview for faculty and focus groups for students were designed, validated, and conducted. A total of 281 faculty and 908 students participated in this study. The main quantitative results indicate that students who took on-site classes evaluate the variables better than those who took hybrid classes. In addition, students who took remote classes evaluate the authenticity variable better than those who took it in alternate hybrid modality. In the case of the faculty, only the equality variable showed significant differences between the reported modalities. Besides, the main qualitative results indicate that perceptions are quite different between faculty and students while getting their perceptions from an evaluation standards scope. Thus, their perspectives around equality, authenticity, feasibility, reliability and ethics were obtained and discussed against literature. The main conclusions of the study remarked that students and faculty were positive towards most of the execution of learning assessment and learning outcomes practices during the pandemic. Nevertheless, students’ preference of on-site modality was determined as the way they have more opportunities for interacting and learning more from assessment and feedback.