Challenges of remote assessment in higher education in the context of COVID-19: a case study of Middle East College

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. In the current study, the challenges of remote assessment during COVID-19 incident in higher education institutions were investigated taking Middle East College as a case study. For the study, questionnaires were prepared and data from 50 faculties were collected and analyzed. The study focused on the challenges of remote assessment in general and academic dishonesty in particular. 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.