E-learning

One of the most important parts of teaching is appropriate and adequate assessments. This is true both in the traditional model of learning and in e-learning. At the most basic level, assessments test how much knowledge students have retained from their learning and how well they’ve learned to apply it.

This provides feedbacks not only to the students regarding what areas they need to improve in, but also to teachers regarding how they can improve their teaching methods. On a second level, assessments also provide a degree of motivation to students to study well.

Many students have a competitive spirit and want to perform well. Even those who lack this competitive spirit are usually motivated by the disciplinary measures associated with low performance in assessments.

Assessments in Traditional Model of Learning

Assessments are taken within the classroom in the traditional way of learning. The teacher designs an assessment, and the students are told to attempt to solve it. As it is well known that assessments are intended for the purpose of testing how much students know, which allows them to read their textbooks and notes during the test. or use any other materials they may find in order to study better for examinations without being caught out so long as other students are still doing so also.

There is a strong emphasis on memorization. Assessments are not for studying. They should have been allowed to die long ago rather than poisoning our schools and casting a shadow on generations of children. No skill can be tested in a multiple-choice examination, which is the only kind of testing we do.

There is also little incentive for a student who wants to let right and wrong opinions not count but rather seeks understanding as an end in itself. Rote Memorization of course material is widespread in Pakistan.

The instructors at most schools and colleges do not want to spend a lot of time studying how each individual student comes out with so they settle for just checking what everybody remembers from their given course.

After all, there is no attempt to test how far the student has really understood anything or how effective his thinking attitude might become during examinations where teachers must be contacted again and again by appointments with parental signature involved in getting an audience from them at all meaning Junior has to score high enough on those tests Rote memorization Like this means that the student has to memorize everything in his course of study without understanding it.

Critical thinking and relearning is not encouraged. Instead, students are encouraged to merely memorize the content of their course. Appreciative or critical thinking has little support. Needlessto say, this culture of rote-memorization meant that our education sector fell into stagnation.

Year after year students are beginning to graduate from the education system with no concept for what they have learnt or internalized and least of all how they can use any self-generated knowledge in future employment opportunities.Perhaps these weary dissertations will be to little avail.

Assessments in E-Learning

Assessments in online courses take place in a completely different environment than in the traditional model. In online courses, the students are attempting the assessments from their home.

There is no invigilator insight to ensure that no cheating takes place. The students have access to study material as well as the internet. In such a situation, it is a given that many students will resort to cheating.

Different platforms have resorted to different measures to stop or reduce teaching, especially over the last year as many educational institutes have shifted to distance learning classes. One of these measures has been to limit the time of the assessments, so that students don’t have enough time to make too much use of their study material.

Alternatively, some institutes have insisted that students give assessments while keeping their webcam on so the online invigilator can ensure no cheating takes place.

It can be argued that both these measures are actually counterproductive, and outdated. They just attempt to replicate the environment of the traditional model of learning, with little regard to how e-learning is different.

A new Approach

Some institutes have distinguished themselves by adopting a new approach to assessments, one that is not only more suited for online assessments, but which also promotes understanding and application of knowledge.

This approach has been to design an alternative form of assessment based not on testing the knowledge of students, but rather how they apply that knowledge in different scenarios based on their understanding of it.

This can be done in a number of different ways. Students can be required to do presentations and similar projects where they have to undertake some research in addition to what they have learned from their course. A second way is to design open-book exams which actually expect students to make use of their study material.

Rather than testing how much students have memorised from their course, open-book exams test how well students can apply their knowledge in different problems, case studies and evaluations.

Ultimately this approach, whether in the form of projects or of open-book exams, promotes critical thinking. Students are required to think outside the confines of the classroom, to carry out their own research, and most importantly to truly understand what they have learnt.

By having to apply their knowledge in various scenarios, that knowledge is then deeply ingrained within the students’ minds and they are more likely to remember it in the future than they would have through rote-memorisation.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that e-learning represents the future of education. It is transforming not just the way students are taught, but also how they are assessed.

These transformations are especially important in a country like Pakistan, where the education system is stagnant and students are still being taught through outdated methods that stifle critical thinking and instead promote blind memorisation of content.