I was recently part of a panel session looking at Challenges for quality assurance in the wake of the pandemic – ensuring quality in digital learning, academic integrity in remote assessment, and emerging best practice

I gave a five minute presentation from my personal perspective.

We knew what we were doing.

We knew how to assure quality and academic integrity.

We thought everything was going to be fine….

There were early signs of the impact of Covid-19 back in December 2019 and January 2020.

We thought everything was going to be fine….

A year ago, everything changed.

We went into a national lockdown and all universities needed to start doing things remotely, at pace and at scale.

We quickly translated our practices to online versions.

Our lectures became Zoom calls.

Our seminars became Teams conversations.

Office hours became 24/7 e-mail.

However we merely translated, we didn’t transform, we didn’t think differently.

As for exams and assessment….

Well that didn’t go as planned and was challenging to move online.

Moving assessment online is a journey and one for which we had no map and no real idea of where we wanted to get to.

We thought we could do it?

We thought technology was the solution.

It wasn’t.

The thing is translating practice online doesn’t really work. You lose the nuances of what made the in-person experience so great and you don’t take the advantage of the affordances of what digital can bring.

Can we be surprised when the quality of the experience suffers

Moving exams online doesn’t work.

Moving assessment online is not only possible, but can be done in a way which maintains quality and integrity.

How can you do this when the requirements in place from university exam board, PSRBs and professional accreditation are based on an model which expects a physical in-person assessment.

You need to transform and reimagine assessment.

You can not transform assessment on your own.

However this takes time.

It takes a certain level of digital capability.

It requires an insight into what we mean by assessment and what we are trying to assess.

At Jisc we are here to help the higher education sector through the use of digital to reimagine teaching, learning and assessment and to reframe the student experience.