Answer to Question #221347 in Economics for Ike

Question

"online assessment has become necessary in the implementation measures to combat the spread of covid- 19 pandemic in Ghana's higher educational institutions" . Examine the extent to which this new practice violates the principles of assessment in economics.

Answer 1

Due to the unprecedented COVID-19 incident, higher education institutions have faced different challenges in their teaching-learning activities. Particularly conducting assessments remotely during COVID-19 has posed extraordinary challenges for higher education institutions owing to lack of preparation superimposed with the inherent problems of remote assessment.

The main challenges identified in remote assessment were academic dishonesty, infrastructure, coverage of learning outcomes, and commitment of students to submit assessments. To minimize academic dishonesty, preparing different questions to each student was found to be the best approach. Online presentation was also found to be good option to control academic integrity violations. Combining various assessment methods, for instance report submission with online presentation, helps to minimize academic dishonesty since the examiner would have a chance to confirm whether the submitted work is the work of the student.