QUALITY OF ONLINE BIODIVERSITY SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENTS ADMINISTERED TO STUDENT TEACHERS AT A SOUTH AFRICAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Summative assessments are often used to make high stake decisions about students’ academic success, which have long-term implications for both students and their respective institutions. Therefore, these assessments need to be of high quality to ensure that they yield accurate, objective and dependable results, upon which valid decisions could be made. The use of online assessments, where most lecturers have little experience and students have control of the assessment environment could compromise the quality of summative assessments. This is particularly true for Biodiversity assessments, which are complex. There is dearth of literature on the quality of online Biodiversity summative assessments in the South African context. This qualitative case study was conducted to determine the quality of online Biodiversity summative assessments administered at a South African university. The LINQED Quality Assurance Framework for Student assessment guided this study, which involved a review of eight online Biodiversity summative assessments administered to student teachers. Quality was measured by determining the content validity, authenticity, alignment with course objectives and the cognitive levels at which the assessments were pitched. The reviewed assessments were found to have high content validity and alignment to course objectives, but had poor coverage of the content and course objectives. In addition, the assessments were pitch at low cognitive levels and they had low to moderate authenticity. While these findings are based on a small sample, they could signify a global phenomenon. We therefore recommend further research, involving a bigger sample, to determine the recurrence of the findings from this study.