COVID-19 and psychological assessment teaching practices – Reflections from a South African university

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis posed new challenges in higher education, which compounded the existing challenges. The South African higher education sector responded with plans to secure the learning and teaching mandates and bolster support services for students. An emergency remote learning and teaching plan was launched to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in the 2020 academic year. This article reports on the reflections of lecturers who were teaching psychometric assessment and supervising student psychologists on the clinical master’s programme during the pandemic. The Master’s Clinical Psychology Programme at the University of the Western Cape was the case study. The focus on the psychological assessment module was the unit of analysis. Course documents and reflective notes, generated during the adaptation of psychological assessment training, were used as the data source. Thematic analysis generated five themes, namely, (1) the importance of statutory guidelines for clinical training, (2) adapting content, (3) pedagogy and modalities, (4) management of test libraries and (5) lecturer experience. The management of changes to the module in response to the COVID-19 crisis was challenging. Lecturers had to balance competency training and assessment with revised work and adapted teaching conditions. Emergency teaching interventions took place in the framework of ethics and professional requirement, and the learning outcomes articulated within the scope of practice for clinical psychologists.

Conceptual Development of Online Psychological Assessment Training Design for Guidance and Counseling Teachers on the Academic Life of High School Students

“…Psychological assessments for high school guidance and counseling teachers in Indonesia are generally still limited, and less holistic instruments are used to measure student conditions. The same effect has also occurred in various parts of the world due to this global pandemic, Saudi Arabia [7], Serbia [9], South Africa [10], the UK [11], India [12], etc. The use of Psychological Assessment Instruments developed generally requires a hefty licensing fee.…”

Education Innovations during COVID-19 Pandemic: “A Case of Zimbabwe and South Africa Universities”

“…However, erratic electricity and poor ICT infrastructure disrupted the potential of operating artificial intelligence based technologies in higher institution of learning in South Africa [25]. The common innovations in South Africa universities innovations were zoom, Microsoft teams, emails, blackboard, Moodle, and other Wed based learning Management systems and to a lesser extent WhatsApp [5,10,13]. In Zimbabwe innovations that were implemented are these among others; google class, zoom, email, universities websites, and WhatsApp platforms [9,18,19].…”

“…Given such interesting insights, the current study seeks to investigate the technological innovations that universities implemented during the Corona virus pandemic period. The Digital divide, internet infrastructure, data band width, user capacity, and computer devices are posited as some of the challenges universities faced during the COVID-19 era [8][9][10]. Additionally, the study focused on challenges that hindered e-learning operations.…”

“…Similarly, Moodle platforms, social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube) and zoom were asserted as potential innovations that universities could possibly implemented during the pandemic regardless of digital divide criticality [9]. Use of webinars, video conferencing and WhatsApp platforms were innovative measures taken by one of the South African universities to deliver psychometric lectures [10].…”

Advancing psychological assessment in Africa: Contributions from the African Journal of Psychological Assessment

“…The advent of COVID-19 had a huge impact on higher education, particularly on professional training programmes which involve substantial practical and hands-on training. Munnik, Smith, Adams Tucker and Human (2021) present a case study from the Masters in Clinical Psychology programme at the University of Western Cape discussing the challenges faced in teaching psychological assessment and the methods adopted in adjusting during this time. Wigdorowitz, Rajab, Hassem and Titi (2021) discuss the impact of COVID-19 across both industry and academia, providing suggestions for conducting assessments remotely and issues to consider.…”