DISTANCE ASSESSMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION STUDENTS UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, universities made a mandatory transition to distance education. All higher education institutions in Ukraine completed the spring semester of the 2019–2020 academic year using online tools. However, most of these institutions were not fully prepared to provide online courses. The technical inconsistency of computer equipment or its absence, weak Internet coverage or its absence in a certain area, a small number of certified online tools, computer illiteracy of teachers and students, and a lack of experience in online learning and teaching became the main problems that institutions had to face in education. In addition to everything else, a new question arose: what approaches will be used for evaluation? The current study examines various technological innovations in teaching, learning, and assessment that have been implemented or continued in higher education institutions around the world and how they may have helped reduce the likelihood of academic misconduct by learners during emergency distance learning during the pandemic. The useful functions of modern online learning tools are analyzed, in particular, the ability to provide instant feedback, the convenience of editing written work by the applicant based on teacher feedback, the ease of submission and response, control and storage of written work, the provision of statistical data, the potential for improving assessment tools and products, ensuring participation and student motivations, reuse, etc. The study found that addressing the problems of online grading, writing off, and other types of academic plagiarism is necessary on many levels, including improving student knowledge and ethics; providing technical support to scientific and pedagogical workers and students of education; overcoming the resistance of the conservative part of the participants in the educational process to educational innovations due to their relatively low level of mastery of modern educational technologies; training educators in methods of preventing academic dishonesty; and monitoring and applying strict sanctions to those who engage in such practices.