Perspective Chapter: COVID-19 as a Catalyst for the Acceleration of Change in the Assessment Culture of Caribbean Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The COVID-19 challenges to Caribbean higher education institutions prompted a transition in the teaching-learning environment from the traditional face-to-face mode to online or distance modes. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the need for change in the assessment practices of Caribbean higher education institutions in the wake of changes in the teaching-learning environments due to COVID-19. By calling attention to the international debate on assessment practices in higher education precipitated by the pandemic, this paper makes the case that the time has come for Caribbean higher education institutions to make a clean break from assessment that is heavily memory dependent and information laden to assessment that is more meaningful and fit for the development and certification of students with competencies that are critical for Caribbean development. Authentic assessment, which makes use of assessment tasks that look more like the actual activities and processes in which persons are engaged in the real world, is posited as the way forward for Caribbean higher education institutions. The paper concludes that the Region’s higher education institutions must consider how they may collaborate with providers of technology solutions to develop assessment process that are fit for the preparation of students for the future.

1. Introduction

The Caribbean (which, in this chapter, refers to the Anglo-Caribbean) is well known for its culture of examinations at all levels of the education system. This is part of its heritage as colonies of the British Empire. Standardised testing approaches are paramount in these examinations. Here, the conditions of administration, including the physical examination setting, the directions to examinees, the test materials and the time factors are the same for all examinees [1]. In higher education institutions, standardised examinations are generally administered in fixed rooms at fixed times. With such a deeply embedded examinations culture, the countries and educational institutions in the Caribbean were severely affected by COVID-19.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 created what was undoubtedly the largest disruption of education systems in history [2]. In the vast majority of countries it prompted a transition in the teaching-learning environment from the traditional face to face mode to online or distance modes [3, 4, 5]. More than 1.6 billion learners in more than 200 countries were affected globally by this change [6].

According to one United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) estimate, as many as 60% of the global student population has been affected by closure of educational institutions which offered face-to-face delivery of education [7]. Higher education institutions worldwide shut down their campuses, affecting around 99% of the world’s higher education student population [8]. Like the rest of the global community, Caribbean countries had to cope with the impact of COVID-19. Higher education institutions in the Region had to make a rapid transition to remote instruction as part of the measures to minimise potential learning loss or “COVID slide” as one researcher characterised it [9].

2. Precipitation of a discourse on the need for change

Like other educational institutions, higher education institutions had to transform, rapidly, to online delivery of courses [10, 11]. This rapid movement from face-to-face to emergency remote instruction required both faculty and students in higher education institutions to adapt quickly to new technologies. The transformation involved not only their teaching processes but also their assessment processes as they sought to undertake both teaching and assessment online. As Pandya et al. put it:

Faculty at the front line were exposed to drastic pedagogical transitions wherein the course content, delivery methods, delivery tools and assessment strategies had to be remodelled on an urgent basis so that effective remote learning can be facilitated. Higher education institutions…. experienced galactic pedagogical transitions from Pre-Covid… period to Covid… period. ([12], p. 987)

In response to the challenges of COVID-19, and the need to make the shift from face-to-face instruction to online instruction, higher education institutions have responded to the need for a different approach to the assessment of their students. A number of new assessment solutions were implemented. These included the replacement of the timed three-hour face-to-face written examinations with online oral examinations, proctored online examinations and open-book examinations [13], or some combination of these.

University faculty have had to rethink, as well, whether the typical pen-and-paper examinations should be permanently replaced with the more innovative approaches to assessment that were introduced in the wake of COVID-19. In fact, the pandemic, precipitated a debate on assessment practices in the higher education sector, including whether the in-person, fixed time, paper-based assessment was the way to continue into the future [14, 15]. It appears that University faculty adapted quickly to both the new mode of instruction and assessment and, and according to one writer, faculty who previously fought the introduction of online pedagogy and technology subsequently fought against to teaching in person [9].

As in many other geographical areas, these quick fixes were also utilised in Caribbean higher education institutions. Without doubt, as in other parts of the world, their implementation must have raised the consciousness within higher education sector of the Region about the need to rethink the way students were assessed in a world where technology has become central to the improvement of many facets of education.

The more extensive use of online delivery of courses and programmes in higher education in response to the challenges of COVID-19, creates a heightened awareness of the need to accelerate the pace of much needed reform of instruction and assessment to bring them more in sync with the digital age and the world of artificial intelligence and virtual reality in which students live and for which higher education should be preparing them. The inescapable need for an accelerated pace of assessment reform is properly highlighted by Hughes, the Campus and Secondary School Principal of La Grande Boissière International School of Geneva when he states that few rituals in education were as old-fashioned and out of kilter with the way the world works today as examinations [16].

It is evident that the archaic pen and paper face-to-face assessment process needs to be rapidly reformed. The Working Group of Emerge Education and Jisc specialists put very succinctly the need for this change when they state that:

Our view is that assessment in 2030 has to be relevant for the context of future decades rather than previous decades. Employers will wish to understand attainment in ways other than the ability to write long essays by hand or perform feats of memory recall. ([17], p. 19)

These specialists lamented that traditional assessments fall short of what is required in a number of ways, including the assessment of soft skills, and that it is out of kilter with the behaviour-based assessment that are being used, increasingly, by employers. They also noted that these traditional examinations impose constraints on developing creativity and divergent thinking.

3. The need for authentic assessment

Authentic assessment is important alternative for overcoming the limitations of traditional assessment. It supports a much-needed transformation in the preparation of higher education graduates to satisfy expectations in a 21st century work environment. Griffith [18] points out that, with a few exceptions, the conventional examination essentially provides an assessment of certain relevant knowledge that students are expected to acquire in a particular subject matter and how well they can communicate this in a manner that others can understand. The author noted that many high performing students in the conventional examination often find it difficult to transfer the knowledge they have acquired to the resolution of issues in their real-world environment.

In supporting the need for a sharper focus on authentic assessment in the preparation of graduates, Fergusson et al. [19] point out that:

Unlike traditional assessment theory and methods, authentic assessment plays a critical role in learning rather than being a process or method for simply measuring the level, stage, or competency gained because of the curriculum, i.e. as a result of learning. Assessment of this type is considered “authentic” because it involves the learner in a process of self-development rather than being imposed from “on high” merely to measure, judge and grade what one has (or has not) already learned. ([19], p. 1192)

The Working Group of Emerge Education and Jisc specialists [17] to whom attention was called earlier, posited that there are three requirements for a well-designed assessment system for the future: relevance, adaptability and trustworthiness. Trustworthiness was defined as “solid foundations of academic integrity, security, privacy and fairness” while adaptability was defined as effectiveness in “addressing the needs of a growing and diverse student population, a range of providers and any number of geographies” [p20]. The third requirement is particularly important to the future of examinations, that is, relevance which they defined as:

Enabling universities to go beyond traditional forms of assessment, dictated by practical limitations of analogue exams, and build systems that are relevant to contemporary needs and reflective of the learning process, and make use of innovative assessment methods too impractical to deliver without digital tools. ([17], p. 20)

Authentic assessment processes that may be enhanced with the use of online digital technologies that have been more widely used for instruction and assessment to cope with the challenges of COVID 19, is an important way of satisfying these three requirements. Properly selected and used, online digital technology with the appropriate security features will assure trustworthiness. Authentic assessment tasks and processes, properly constructed and delivered through appropriate online digital technology, will assure adaptability as well as relevance to the world in which students would live and work, and for which higher education should be preparing them.

The University of the West Indies (UWI), rated as the leading University in the Caribbean [20] for example, through its Board for Undergraduate Studies (BUS) and its Board for Graduate Studies and Research (BGSR) developed and implemented a comprehensive adjustment to its traditional examinations in response to the COVID-19 challenges. The University suspended its face-to-face classes in all UWI Campuses on the basis of safety considerations and government pronouncements. It then undertook a comprehensive movement of course delivery to an online environment in its four landed campuses. Its fifth campus, the Open Campus, was already delivering its courses and programmes online and was able to help the other four campuses in this transition. The University then recommended the adoption of alternative assessment methods to final exams which were submitted online. It recommended the setting of authentic assessment tasks that require the application of higher order thinking skills to demonstrate an understanding of a subject [21].

The UWI was not unique in that regard. In response to COVID-19, other Regional Universities adopted, at least in part, similar assessment strategies focussing on authentic assessment submitted online. This is an important foundation on which the higher education institutions in the Caribbean need to build in fashioning assessment processes for the future.

4. Sustaining the authentic assessment precipitated by COVID 19

Authentic assessment focuses on the application of knowledge to real-life situations. It requires the student to perform, or to create or produce something, based on the requirements of a course. These assessment tasks look more like the actual activities and processes in which persons are engaged in the real world. They require students to apply what they know and to demonstrate the competencies needed for success in the real world [18, 22].

COVID-19, has brought to prominence the need to rethink assessment in higher education and to consider more seriously the acceleration of authentic assessment as a primary form of assessment, given its many advantages for the education and certification of students at that level of the education system. An authentic assessment culture will focus students on acquiring and demonstrating competencies that are associated with their employment after the completion of their higher education courses and programmes. It should provide greater motivation to students than the paper and pencil examination which, in too many instances appears contrived, if not irrelevant to the competencies for which students should be trained in their higher education programmes and courses. A culture of authentic assessment will lead to the setting of assessment tasks that challenge students to demonstrate what they can do with what they have learned and not merely to provide heavily information-laden written responses to questions that may not reflect what they can truly do in a work environment after they graduate from their programmes.

A number of findings from a study undertaken by Griffith [23] focussing on the post-secondary Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) are pertinent to higher education institutions. Griffith reported that employers lamented that the courses of study at that level did not prepare students, adequately, with the higher order skills required in the job market. They suggested that students should be required to use higher order skills to create a product, or generate a solution, as a part of their CAPE programme and certification. Employers were of the view that students needed to develop and demonstrate skills that transcend merely the ability to explain: they should be able to apply their knowledge and skills in a work setting. These observations about the programmes offered at the post-secondary level by the Caribbean Examinations Council are worthy of consideration for students of higher education institutions in the Region.

An important objective of assessing students in a higher education course is to determine and report their levels of attainment. The curriculum and the teaching strategies for each course should be geared at allowing students to develop the competencies defined for the course of study. Invariably, these are not limited to cognitive skills. It is expected that student will develop competencies in making use of these skills and in applying them to resolve certain issues and for making useful contributions in various forms of employment.

The typical examination, with its papers to be completed in limited time, is generally not able to assess these competencies. These papers are therefore limited to those competencies that can be assessed in the limited time and in the format which these examinations permit. They are, invariably, unable to utilise the mix of tasks needed to cover, adequately, the total domain to which inferences are to be made from the test scores or grades awarded to students. Under the circumstances, the scores of the students cannot be relied on as valid measures of the extent to which the competencies, defined for a course, have been accomplished. Therefore, the grades and scores issued to students would have limitations in the inferences that can be made from them about the level of competence students have achieved in the domains defined by the course.

In discussing the importance of alignment between various components of the teaching-learning system, Biggs [24] calls attention, inter alia, to the importance of alignment between course assessment and the intended learning outcomes. Assessment in higher education institutions should be designed in such a way that it measures the outcomes or competencies that students are expected to acquire from taking the course. But, as pointed out in an OECD policy paper that called attention to the limitations of the existing assessment practices at the onset of COVID 19:

While higher education is expected to cultivate students’ deep knowledge and skills, current forms of examinations too often measure students’ mere capacity to recall memorised course content rather than their ability to apply this knowledge and solve real problems. The misalignment between a course examination and intended learning outcomes impairs the capacity of the examination to certify students’ acquisition of these learning outcomes…. If students in higher education are expected to become creative problem-solvers and critical thinkers, then examinations need to measure the actual acquisition of these skills. ([13], p. 10)

The conventional examinations of higher education institutions have certain inherent limitations in achieving the outcomes that are suggested. Fergusson [19] points to two important dimensions of authentic assessment that overcome these limitations. The first is realism which, as the author explains, has to do with the assessment of a situation or a problem that relates to, and is contextualised for, the real world. The second is cognitive challenge that involves the development of higher order cognitive and metacognitive skills through problem solving and the application of knowledge to decision-making.

The programmes and courses of higher education institutions invariably indicate that these are important skills that students are expected to acquire. However, actual assessment often falls short of a focus on these skills that students are expected to develop and demonstrate. The user of the assessment results of students often infers that the test scores or grades are good indicators of the level of attainment of the student in the domain of the programmes and course for which the examination was taken. They therefore treat the examination results as an indication of what students could do if employed in the area in which they have been certified. The validity of such inference is questionable if the examinations from which the scores or grades are derived fail to assess certain expected outcomes of the courses and programmes.

Authentic Assessment provides an appropriate remedy to these limitations of conventional examinations. Properly constructed and administered, it will facilitate an alignment between the intended and the assessed curriculum. It will permit the assessment of those competencies that are critical to the intended curriculum and address the limitations inherent in the conventional pen and paper test, thus allowing valid inferences to be made about student competencies in the course or programme based on the scores or grades derived from their examinations.

It must be acknowledged that some disciplines in higher education institutions in the Caribbean, including the Law Schools and the Schools of Medicine, have been making some use of authentic assessment. However, higher education institutions in the Region need to pursue a rigorous and sustained effort to be embed authentic assessment as a matter of policy into their courses and programmes. The momentous shift to the use of online assessment due to COVID-19 provides the opportunity to jump start the much needed transformation of assessment in the higher education institutions in the Region and to adopt authentic assessment procedures that benefit from existing and emerging online technologies.

5. Authentic assessment for both formative and summative assessment

In making more extensive use of authentic assessment which has been more widely used as a result of the challenges of COVID 19, Caribbean Higher Education institutions need to consider the value of this assessment approach not only in providing more valid assessment results for users of the certification they provide, but also the benefits of using this type of assessment to improve learning. Pokhrel and Chhetri [6] make the point that “authentic assessments and timely feedback are essential components of learning” [p138]. Higher education institutions must take advantage of the flexibility that authentic assessment provides to be used not only for both summative assessment but also for formative assessment.

Summative assessment provides information that may be used to draw conclusions about how well a student has attained the learning targets. It is concerned with students’ achievement at the end of a period of instruction and becomes part of their record of achievement [18]. On the other hand, formative assessment provides the teacher and student with information that guides learning. It involves the assessment of students’ progress by the teacher and the provision of feedback to help them make progress towards achieving the intended outcomes. The feedback that is provided through formative assessment is also helpful to teachers in understanding what students have learned and the effectiveness of their own teaching. On the basis of this feedback, teachers can plan interventions to guide students to cross learning hurdles and improve in areas where they are weak. In addition, formative assessment and the related feedback assist students in undertaking self-assessment of their progress. Students are able to identify the areas in which they are not doing well and can therefore take steps to assure their self-improvement [18, 25].

Summative Assessment data in higher education institutions may be used for formative purposes. A task may be conceptualised or disaggregated into several related dimensions, each of which may be summatively assessed and the scores from the various dimensions cumulated to produce an overall score for the task. However, the performance data on each dimension may also be used formatively to provide comprehensive feedback to the students on their areas of weakness and how these may be improved to aid performance on subsequent dimensions of the task or on related tasks.

As Caribbean higher education institutions consider ways on improving teaching and assessment following two years of the COVID 19 pandemic, the benefits of authentic assessment used both formatively and summatively should be considered. The contributions and complementarity of these two forms of assessment, using the available digital technologies, should be fully utilised.

Teamwork and collaborative skills on online digital platforms have been cited among the competencies that will become increasingly important in most areas of work over the next few years [17]. Here is another area in which authentic assessment is appropriate for development of relevant skills. It would involve a structured process that requires students to work together on a particular task without the direct and immediate supervision of the teacher [26]. The online digital technology being increasingly used in the delivery of teaching and assessment since the COVID 19 pandemic is an excellent means of doing so.

Group work enhances the contribution that assessment can make in providing students with authentic learning experience that prepares them to function better in today’s real world, digital environment. It can help to develop, among higher education students, certain generic skills sought by employers or professions. These include not only skills of teamwork and collaboration, but also skills of leadership, conflict management, and organisational and time management [27, 28, 29]. Group work can therefore be seen as providing authentic experience for students as they engage in, and practice behaviours that are required in the real word of employment to which most will proceed [28].

6. Beyond the COVID 19 emergency measures

The transformation of the assessment process that is proffered in this paper requires Caribbean higher education institutions to go well beyond the emergency use of digital technology pursued over the last two years to cope with the challenges of the COVID 19 pandemic. It requires investment in building a technology capacity that is responsive to the future requirements of instruction and assessment in higher education. The Working Group of Emerge Education and Jisc specialists whose work was previously cited [17] posit that “by 2025, digital technology will make possible assessment that meets five key goals: more authentic, more accessible, appropriately automated, more continuous and more secure” [p7]. Such technology is important to the future of assessment in higher education in the Caribbean Region and in particular to authentic assessment which is essential for “rebooting” assessment in higher education institutions.

The move to more extensive use of authentic assessment that is recommended in this paper will require technology that could facilitate the online invigilation of summative authentic assessments, as well as the online observation and the review of the progress of students, especially for formative authentic assessment or summative authentic continuous assessment. The proper preparation of both teachers and students in higher education institutions in the Caribbean to make effective use of authentic assessment and to optimise the benefits that the available technology provides for the creative design and use of authentic assessment is a paramount consideration for the successful implementation of the recommended assessment transformation.

COVID-19 has already been challenging faculty of higher education institutions in the Region to design online assessments in which stakeholders have confidence. But the experience has also provided an opportunity to rethink assessment in higher education in the Caribbean and the central role of online digital technology in examinations of the future. A golden opportunity is now provided to higher education institutions in the Region to rethink the assessment process so as to (i) help students develop and demonstrate the much-desired higher order thinking, (ii) improve the learning experience and outcomes of higher education and (iii) imbue confidence in the creditability of higher education certification. Not only must the digital technology of higher education institutions in the Region be upgraded, but also the reskilling or upskilling of both teachers and students must be addressed to enable them to make effective use of the technology. These are the sine qua non for the successful implementation of the type of assessment for the future that is recommended here for higher education institutions in the Caribbean.

Successful implementation of the recommended transformation of assessment practices of higher education institutions in the Caribbean to focus on authentic assessment by building on the technology would rely on a facilitating mindset of teachers and students. This view is supported by the work of Lau, Chua, Teow and Xue [30] made the point that student buy-in is important for the successful use of new technologies. They noted that during COVID-19 implementation of online assessments, it was impossible to change mindsets of university students quickly about digital technology for testing. They surmised that this was due to the fact that through their high school years, these students had encountered mainly written examinations and tests as an indicator of their academic achievements. A United Nations policy brief on education during COVID-19 and beyond [2] also raised concerns about how much confidence could be placed on educators themselves in pursuing the task of assessing their students in certain practical or professional domains in the future. Clearly, these are issues that would need to be addressed for the recommended transformation of assessment in higher education institutions in the Caribbean.

Without clear targets and schedules for transformation, the required change will be slow in coming to Caribbean higher education institutions. These institutions and their host countries and governments need to be sensitised to the need to make the changes that are critically necessary to improve the process of assessment with the aid of online digital technology. In this regard, the experience of the rapid and radical emergency changes that already had to be made in the wake of COVID 19 by using online digital technology should provide the impetus for rethinking assessment for the future in Regional higher education institutions.

7. Conclusion

The time has come for higher education institutions in the Caribbean Region to make a clean break from the assessment that is so heavily memory dependent and information laden to assessment that is more meaningful and fit for the development and certification of students with competencies that are critical for Regional development. If the Region is to avoid being left behind in the unfolding examinations revolution, it must act with alacrity to build on the forced advances in assessment that have already been made in responding to the challenges of COVID-19. The Region’s higher education institutions must consider how they may collaborate with providers of technology solutions to begin the task of accelerated development of an assessment processes that is fit for the preparation of students for the future.