If someone had earlier said that one can get education in the comfort of their homes, irrespective of the geographical distance between the teacher and students, she would have either been mocked at for wishful thinking or be cursed for using ‘comfort’ and ‘education’ in the same sentence. Yet the present stands before us, telling the tale of the ever-constant ‘law of change’.
- The outbreak of the global pandemic made the world around us come to a standstill. On one hand, the world grappled with major health and economic crises, and on the other it moved aggressively towards digitalisation making it an integral part of our lives. Even before we knew it, we had embraced the virtual world with open arms. In this paradigm shift, the education sector evolved the fastest and the pandemic proved to be the tipping point for this transformation.
- A lot has changed since then. From live online classes to virtual student-teacher interactions, and from online homework and project submissions to well-proctored online exams, students’ learning went through it all. I would not shy away from stating that the resistance towards adapting to this change was very strong, from every stakeholder—students, teachers and parents. But coming back to the law of change which states that everything is in the process of becoming something else, so were each of the stakeholders.
- This has now become the new normal for each of them. Students today are well-adept with technology and are using it to their advantage. It is here that e-assessments can bridge the learning gap. Students may be using various modes of learning—from classroom lectures to YouTube videos to online courses. They can still come back to gauge the effectiveness of their learning using e-assessment tools. Teachers, as important stakeholders, are also a part of such tools and can use these for assessments of their entire class effortlessly. It’s a win-win for both.
Not only does the diagnostic nature of e-assessment make it a go-to tool for examination preparation, but interesting gamification adds the required spunk to the otherwise drab tests. In this hybrid form, e-assessments are here to stay and slay. They will keep evolving to give as simulated an environment to test-takers as possible, nearly replicating the feel of an actual examination.
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