Students’ Evaluation of Online Assessment Practices in the Covid-19 Online Teaching Period: In Türkiye, Poland, Republic of North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak forced many changes in education, including teaching techniques, teacher-student interactions, materials, and assessment practices. The present study aims to uncover students’ opinions on the types of exams they took, their evaluation of the testing/ assessment practices they experienced, whether online learning influenced the way they prepared for the exams, whether they would like to keep the testing/assessment practices in the new normal and how they evaluate the teacher’s role as an assessor. The data for the study were collected in Türkiye (TUR), the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM), Poland (POL), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) using cross-culturally valid questionnaires including items asking students to evaluate the teaching, assessment, and interaction skills of their teachers during the first “emergency online teaching semester”. Both closed- and open-ended items were included in the data collection tools. Responses to the items in the questionnaires were analysed quantitatively, keeping in mind country and context-specific peculiarities. The study results show similarities in the ways students were evaluated and their perceptions of evaluation procedures during the COVID-19 period, as well as contextual differences in the four countries.

Keywords

• COVID-19 related educational change, language assessment, language learning, evaluation of assessment practices