There’s an elephant in the room!
At times, the whole world seems to be falling to pieces around us. Yet, the expectation is that we carry on and do our best to get through the crisis remains – and this expectation is right, as learners are looking towards educators for guidance and for a way through. I see it as our duty to ensure that the interruption to education is as minimal as possible and we’re all stepping up to try to do our bit. That’s why we’re doing the Oxford English Assessment Professional Development conference, to provide professional development to teachers who want to know more about assessment. For more information about what else Oxford University Press is doing to support students and teachers, click here.
My session is about assessing online and by providing access to this kind of professional development to teachers, I hope that our students benefit. Now the elephant called COVID-19 has been addressed, let’s move on to explore what changes it will leave in its wake and how teachers can adapt now to best serve their students.
A changed educational landscape
The current situation means that even teachers who have always avoided online are being forced to deliver lessons and/or content to their students digitally. There’s a spectrum here from the school which provides a few worksheets to parents to the schools who carry out all lessons via Zoom. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, there’s no denying that we’re all learning to do things differently and, in many ways, the digital revolution in education that has been promised for decades is now being forced upon the world. The impact of these changes is going to last far longer than the pandemic itself.
The continued importance of assessment
Assessment remains important in this new world for all the benefits that it brings, and I’ll discuss these more in my talk. In the absence of face-face contact, good assessment is more important than ever in providing feedback to students on their learning journey and keeping students engaged and motivated. Delivering this type of assessment online might be a challenge for some teachers and in this session, I’ll talk about some different scenarios where good assessment can be implemented, and I’ll provide you with a toolkit for carrying out assessment online.
Tell me what you want, what you really, really want!
The scenarios I’m going to address are based on what I know about learning, teaching and assessment but I’m not the expert in what’s happening for you right now. It would be awesome if you could leave comments and let me know about any scenarios you would like me to explore or any questions you have about online assessment. I’ll try to include as many as possible in the talk and I’ll make sure there’s a lot of time for questions and discussion. Join me and a community of educators to explore the topic of online assessment in a changed world.
In the absence of face-face contact, good assessment is more important than ever in providing feedback to students on their learning journey and keeping students engaged and motivated. In my session, I’ll talk about some different scenarios where good assessment can be implemented, and I’ll provide you with a toolkit for carrying out assessment online.
Sarah Rogerson is Director of Assessment at Oxford University Press. She has worked in English language teaching and assessment for 20 years and is passionate about education for all and digital innovation in ELT. As a relative newcomer to OUP, Sarah is really excited about the Oxford Test of English and how well it caters to the 21st-century student.
Thx for the post. I’ve already registered to your talk. I’m currently teaching at an institute on the verge of launching online classes, but online evaluation will be carried out through the textbook publisher’s LMS, Cambridge University Press. This will be really unreliable and seemingly invalid. For the time being, that’s what’s going to happen. However, what suggestions can you give on the matter? Are there any reliable, valid and trustworthy achievement assessment ways to do this better and more effectively and efficiently? Please take into account the institute teaches EFL over 14000 university students.