The New Normal: Online Classes and Assessments during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The current quantitative research paper intends to examine the experience and opinion of students and teachers on online teaching and assessment during the COVID-19 outbreak. Online classes have substituted face-to-face classes. Both students and teachers are experiencing the new normal in the pandemic. This study attempts to investigate students' and teachers’ experiences and opinions about virtual learning and testing. For this, two sets (one for students and other for teachers) of questionnaires were formulated to collect data. Each set of questionnaires had three sections; first about demographic information of the participants, second (variables, 1-9) about online classes and third (variables, 10-18) about online assessments. 150 subjects (90 students and 60 teachers) participated from five countries: Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, England and Canada. SPSS was used to analyze the data statistically. The results showed that both students and teachers were ready to imply online teaching as it is the need of the hour and future, but they did not find online teaching and assessment to be of high quality as that of face-to-face learning during the COVID-19 period. Moreover, the findings of the study did not exhibit much significant difference between teachers' and students’ experience and opinions towards online classes and assessment across all five countries. Furthermore, the study offers some implications based on the findings. The researchers see that blended learning might be the future of education. It would maintain the quality of learning and prepare educational institutions and teachers to meet any challenge in this unpredictable world.

Keywords

• Applied Linguistics
• e-Learning
• COVID-19
• Online Classes
• Online Assessment
• Online Teaching