Bias, Safety and Legal Issues in Online Assessment

Online assessment brought along with it the issues of bias, safety and some legal implications that educators need to consider seriously. This is the next section of the course. This section was done also as an online discussion. As to bias, discussions centers mostly on assessment based on uniformity of standard; biases based on gender and class as well as the validity of measurement, that is, is the item measuring what it is expected to measure. Safety on the other hand deals with the credibility of the assessment process. For example, the issue of who is taking the assessment at the other end of the system, especially when the assessment is being taken at a distance. Finally, legal issues relating to the permanence of the educational records of learners and the damage such records can portend if they fall into wrong hands. The forum also discussed extensively the manner in which these issues can be handled to produce reliable and valid assessment. Below is the link to the discussion forum:


Bias, Safety and Legal Issues in Online Assessment

As you read the online forum, you will discover that I goofed in my first submission on the forum as I mistook online assessment for online discussion forum assessment. This was promptly corrected by my instructor's feedback and I got back to the current soon after that. At the end of the discussion forum, each participant also gave a summation of their learning experience of this section.

The main problem I had here was that I had to go back and read all over as I had mistaken the thread of the assignment. However, within a week, I was back to the forum and continued with the discussions. However, I got to know here that there are legal rights in assessment that learners are entitled to (which in developing countries like Nigeria is a mirage). Apart from this, I came to know that online assessment could also be fraught with bias which hitherto I had taught would be limited to traditional assessment. Safety issues revolving round the security of the examination was another area I learnt that online login matters can be tightened when biometric assessment are added to ensure that the expected candidate is also the person writing examination. Various steps to be taken are also learnt. Since this was a discussion forum, I did not have any major problem.