Chapter 7 - Assessment: higher education institutions’ innovative online assessment methods beyond the era of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The main thrust of the chapter is to understand the higher education institutions’ (HEIs’) innovative online assessment methods beyond the era of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter covers the following topics online learning and assessment, HEI’s online assessment: The evolution and the paradigm shift, innovative formative assessment adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic, summative assessment currently adopted, and their future use in the education sector and blended learning and blended assessment during and post the COVID-19 era. Literature was conceptualized in line with the innovative online assessment techniques to be implemented by HEI during and post the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature-based discussion papers covered a period between 2010 and 2022. The study used Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review. It is an international initiative developed by researchers to address the ongoing issue of lack of well-documented and transparent review methods reported in published literature. A total of 50 research, highly indexed articles, publications from HEIs with practical experiences and blogs with proven credentials, were selected from different literature and a sample was drawn based on researchers’ convenience and appreciation of the context. These papers were used to inform the chapter finding, discussion, and recommendations. A variety of literature texts that were examined disclosed different opinions regarding the innovative learning and assessment post the COVID-19 pandemic. These opinions are tabled in Tables 1, 2, and 3 under discussion of findings section. The major recommendations were that COVID-19 created an opportunity for HEIs to implement a curriculum that is developmental, personalized, and evolving, it was also noted that the future on assessment and evaluation should give students autonomy to choose between online or physical assessment modes without the institutions regulating on a single mode. Blended or hybrid assessment is also highly recommended as the best approach to adopt post-COVID pandemic. There is need for the HEIs to create collaboration to allow the use of work-based assessment in the form of internships with the industry among other recommendations. Finally, the future of HEIs to survive future pandemics lies in being proactive than being reactive.