Trustworthy remote assessments: A typology of pedagogical and technological strategies

ABSTRACT

BackgroundOnline learning has grown significantly during the past two decades, and COVID‐19 pandemic has expedited this process. However, previous research has shown how academic dishonesty is more prevalent under these modalities. Therefore, there is the challenge of performing trustworthy remote assessments, in order to obtain valid and reliable measures of students' knowledge.ObjectivesThe research question that drove this research was what actions have been proposed in contemporary research to improve remote assessment trustworthiness from a technological and pedagogical perspective?MethodsWe analysed the papers accepted for the special issue titled ‘Trustworthy Assessment and Academic Integrity in Remote Learning’ following a deductive qualitative category coding methodology to find the main approaches.Results and conclusionsWe identified eight approaches to improve trustworthiness in remote assessment four for exams and high‐stake tests, one exclusively for performance‐based assessments, and three for any type of assessment. Our findings shift attention from academic dishonesty to trustworthy assessment, integrating recent findings of papers accepted to this special issue.ImplicationsOur findings deepen current understanding of trustworthy remote assessments, inviting practitioners and researchers to explore different types of assessment methods and different moments related to assessing learning.AlternateLay DescriptionWhat is already known about this topic?Online learning has grown significantly during the last decade.This growth increases the need for online assessment methods that can provide a valid, reliable, and fair measure of student knowledge.Research demonstrated the prevalence of academic dishonesty in online learning.There is a timely need to research and develop methods for trustworthy online assessment, as well as to raise the awareness of researchers, practitioners, and administrators, to the topic and to the solutions at hand.What this paper adds?A review of the state‐of‐the‐art with respect to trustworthy assessment in online learning.A typology of strategies to improve trustworthy assessment, characterizing the pedagogical approach, technological method, context, and type of assessment.An analysis of different solutions, approaches, and case studies, with respect to the proposed typology.A novel approach to inform the design and implementation of valid and reliable online assessment.The implications for practitionersThe paper presents strategies and approaches for implementing trustworthy assessment in online learning.The paper provides a conceptual framework that can inform the design of valid and reliable assessments methods, and analyse both existing and newly proposed onesHighlighting the importance of including the assessment as an integral part of the instructional design phase of online learning offerings.