A report on grading during distance learning

The purpose of this report is to describe and evaluate grading during distance learning. It was written as a part of ITS subject and will be posted on our internet site. It focuses on the period between November 2020 and March 2021 and is not based on the situation in our school but provides my personal overview of the current situation.

Distance learning

This is the second time students and teachers have been sent home due to coronavirus. Therefore, we were better prepared and more experienced. But an obvious problem remained, how to carry out the testing. The solution to wait until we could go back to school was immediately out of the question since we tried that last year and the results were not good. Every teacher was on his own and had to decide how to proceed.

Types of online testing

There are many ways to obtain marks, each has its cons and pros. Firstly, many teachers decided to assess our cooperation and amount of work we put in during regular lessons. Oral testing remained since it was very reliable, especially if they demanded a second camera to check for cheat sheets. Written exams posed the greatest challenge, some decided to skip them entirely while others found different solutions such as exam.net or other sites that enabled somewhat safe and fair testing.

Problems

Even though teachers try to limit cheating they have not been completely successful and the results are consequently not entirely trustworthy. From a student’s standpoint online testing can present much more stress and many students work in very inappropriate environments. However, there are many that exploit the situation and easily obtain good marks they do not deserve. As a result, there are students with good marks that have not acquired any knowledge and the point of education is lost.

Conclusion

In conclusion, coronavirus forced schools to adapt and find new ways to teach overnight. Grading was not great since it allowed more cheating and inequality among students than ever before. It was done, but the results are sometimes misleading and do not reflect the effort of the students put into studying, at least in some cases. I am proud we pulled it off, but at the same time I hope we will never have to do it again.

vir slike: https://pixabay.com/photos/board-school-blackboard-chalk-2167844/