Somehow teaching and exams have to go on! Millions of families and thousands of schools face major challenges during the lockdown and the whole COVID gate. Solutions for supervision, the continuation of lessons, and final exams have to be found quickly.
So, what are the schools doing about taking online classes and online assessments?
If you want to take something positive out of the current crisis, it is that it enabled our schools and teachers to grow on a steep learning curve in terms of digital education.
Looking ahead, it becomes clear that the digitalization of learning and teaching can now be done only with a clear, holistic strategy. The lessons of the Corona crisis offer opportunities to finally implement such a strategy effectively, thereby ensuring a sensible mix of face-to-face and distance teaching and taking online assessments.
Let’s take a look at what happened recently, you’ll see everything that’s wrong with how the schools and colleges are trying to implement this now.
A reputed engineering college in the western part of India decided to conduct exams online. To save costs, the administration builds its platform to conduct the exams. As soon as the exams start, the assessment platform crashes. With all the questions in front of them, the students got all the time to prepare the answers by all means, fair or unfair. The result – everyone passed. For a college that has an image to maintain, this was humiliating.
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After observing many such instances in the last few months, here are six observations that you will totally agree with:
Digital learning is becoming mainstream.
All teachers now have to use digital applications to prepare their lessons and to reach all students. However, the traditional didactics cannot be directly translated into digital teaching; the crisis requires further training for the entire teaching staff. Experience in digital learning and teaching with new applications has so far largely been self-taught.
However, a good online assessment tool like Questy can provide an easy to use application which can effectively manage the administrative processes of conducting exams with Questy and save time and resources.
Equal opportunities now also means digital equal opportunities.
A mobile phone is usually not enough to enable relevant success in digital learning; A large number of digital applications require a tablet or computer. However, not all children have access to such digital devices and reliable Internet. As a result, schoolchildren are experiencing different increases in learning – the gap between children from disadvantaged and educated classes is widening.
A wide range of offers for digital learning makes it difficult to keep an overview.
A multitude of digital applications is springing up. The crisis also offers new players a window of opportunity. The growing variety of digital learning content, tools, and platforms creates uncertainty. There is a lack of criteria and competencies to identify quality offers. Also, there is a lack of knowledge of how these applications relate to the curricula and which ones are the best to take an online assessment of students.
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Communication matters more than ever.
Learning is and remains a social process. Successful learning requires communication, interaction, and feedback between teachers as well as with and between parents and students. Some aspects such as online assessments with the right set of questions are currently neglected in digital applications. There is a lack of knowledge and reliable access to digital communication and learning platforms. Besides, neither all students nor teachers have the end devices required for corresponding communication.
The protection of personal data creates uncertainty.
The use of digital applications creates a large amount of data about teachers and students and their learning processes. As no clear structures have been created so far and practicable solutions are lacking, uncertainty regarding data protection is growing. This uncertainty either leads to a blowback to applications that are in a gray area under data protection law.
With the Questy online assessment tool, you can rely on the security-first approach. The user management dashboard is embedded with features that grant appropriate access to the users.
Educational federalism has failed.
Individual federal states have failed to create a corresponding digital infrastructure in recent years; a joint action by the educational institutions is also almost completely absent. The government acts as a gap filler: funds must be used to acquire educational content, such as licenses and new learning materials.
What follows from these observations?
How can the findings be translated into a long-term strategy and how can the current push be used to systematically unlock the potential of digital education?
Here’s a list of things that you, as an educational institution, can do.
- Make digital learning the standard.
- Promote digital equity.
- Providing orientation to use online teaching and online assessment tools.
- Enable the extensive use of online learning and communication platforms.
- Ensure data protection and make uniform regulations to earn the trust of your teachers and students.
- Clarify educational policy responsibilities and funding.
The crisis is an opportunity
The current corona crisis will probably continue for a few months or even a year. It is currently not foreseeable whether and when classes will be offered regularly again in schools and colleges this school year. The speed of the switch from offline to online has surprised the entire educational landscape and posed major challenges. As dramatic as the situation is at the moment, there is something positive to be gained from this crisis. It will change schooling forever!
Get in touch with our experts to know how the Questy online assessment tool can aid your organization in moving forward!
