Assessment is critical in postsecondary education, as it is at all levels. Assessments are classified into four types: diagnostic, summative, evaluative, and formative. Recent trends in assessment have migrated away from summative to formative evaluations. Formative evaluations help students develop expertise and concentrate their schedules, ease…

With the operationalisation of lockdowns and restrictions on public gatherings, education systems across the entire globe were confronted with an urgent need to reconsider alternative forms of teaching, learning and assessment. Some institutions in developing countries were especially hard-hit by the shift owing to inadequacies in training and…

The COVID-19 pandemic created a situation for the implementation of emergency remote learning. This meant that as a lecturer at a traditionalist University of contact sessions, the pandemic forced us to teach remotely through online methods of communication, using online lectures, narrated powerpoints, voice clips, podcasts, interviews and…

In the shift to Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning (ERT&L) during the COVID-19 pandemic, remote assessment and feedback became a major source of discontent and challenge for students and staff. This paper is a reflection and analysis of assessment practices during ERT&L, and our theorisation of the possibilities for shifts towards…

Purpose: This study aimed to analyse if significant pedagogical transitions occurred from Pre-COVID-19 to COVID-19 period concerning applied teaching methods, course content, assessment strategies, technical support and faculty's readiness. Design/methodology/approach: This is a quantitative study wherein perceptions of 116 faculty (from higher…

There is a growing body of research that suggests that improving the quality of online formative assessment strategies increases students' motivation to participate in online assessment. However, the way in which course leaders at open distance learning universities communicate the expectations of learning to students through online formative…

Higher education in emerging economies has taken advantage of several technology affordances for student assessment in the digital era. However, the use of educational technology remains an area of concern in this context because of unequal technology terrain. This issue is more difficult in distance education, where students live in and work in…

This brief to Ministers of Education provides examples of how governments and institutions made it possible for people to continue their education during the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies factors that contributed to success.

Internationally, guidelines for distance education advise the use of feedback from students in designing and redesigning materials. As my own attempt to elicit such feedback was an instructive failure, I decided to draw on theorisations of pedagogy, mediation and subjectivity and on international and local (South African) conceptualisations of a…

The current post-apartheid system of education in South Africa requires students to be critical thinkers. Education institutions utilise a variety of assessment strategies; peer assessment, self-assessment, and group assessment are some of the formative assessments that are crucial in the promotion of students. This article reports on the findings…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Conference on Education and New Developments 2013, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 1 to 3 of June. Education, in a global sense, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the human being, in the way one thinks, feels and acts. One of the…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 10th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2014, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society, in Madrid, Spain, February 28-March 2, 2014. The Mobile Learning 2014 International Conference seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and…

Formative assessment in distance teaching is a complex issue, particularly when diverse students are involved. At Unisa many students from previously disadvantage backgrounds need to be accommodated in tertiary mathematics and science. However, many such students have limited entry-level mathematical knowledge and academic skills. This article…

In pursuit of quality, the learning process should be continuously improved by changing, among other things, the learning material and the way learning is facilitated. A concern for academics, teaching experience in the B.Ed. module: Personnel Management, a module offered by means of distance education at the University of South Africa, is to…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…