UMS likely to resume sessions on June 9
Published on: Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Kota Kinabalu: Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) is likely to resume Semester 2 of the 2019/2020 academic session by June 9 due to the uncertainties of the Movement Control Order (MCO) extensions as well as various other factors.Disclosing this in a statement, Monday, UMS’ Centre for Teaching Excellence and Academic Quality (CTEAQ) Director Prof Dr Vincent Pang said lecturers are encouraged to continue their teaching and learning activities via the UMS learning management system (SMARTv3) or other suitable online tools while waiting for classes to resume.
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“Assessments that were initially planned could be adjusted to fit in the current MCO circumstances by replacing conventional assessment methods with alternative assessment,” he said.
“The key to the adjustment into alternative teaching methods is that 70-80 per cent of student learning time (SLT) is completed, and all course learning outcomes be attained by students.
“However, adjustment of assessment methods seems to be a challenging task for academics and students alike.”
Pang added, alternative assessment includes different forms of assessment – authentic, performance-based, personalised, integrated, contemporary, real-time, challenge-based, and profiling type which could all be conducted face-to-face as well as online.
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He said designing alternative online assessments in a course should, however, be guided by at least three main principles – constructive alignment, multiple methods and practicality.
“To cope with MCO, various methods of conducting the online assessment, either synchronous or asynchronous, are possible.
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“Synchronous assessment methods may include live online discussions, oral examinations, live presentations (via Google Meet, Microsoft Teams or WebEx), and online tests (via Kahoot, Google Form or Quizizz).
“While asynchronous assessment, which does not need students to be online at the same time, allows students to submit their assessment tasks via learning management systems such as SMARTv3, Google Classroom and Edmodo, or present their work by uploading their video to YouTube,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said a live e-forum via Google Meet on alternative assessment was hosted by CTEAQ and the Centre for e-Learning (CeL), recently.
The panel of the forum comprised Pang and Faculty of Psychology and Education Deputy Dean Dr Denis Lajium and participated by over 110 lecturers.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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