Enhanced Testing for Education in Emergencies

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic completely changed the context in which traditional education had taken place. There was an urgent need to find efficient techniques to solve the problem of engagement, performance and academic motivation. For this reason, the researchers designed a learning model based on enhanced web-quizzing. The paper depicts the experience of exploiting the web-quizzing with the aim of investigating its potential in the emergency educational setting.The purpose of the article is to describe the testing procedure and the impact of the suggested sets of specially designed course-related web quizzes on students' learning. The paper provides a detailed analysis of a set of cloud-based tests generated in various online applications, divided into 4 main groups according to their purposes and places in the educational process.In summary, the authors conclude that thoroughly designed continuous enhanced testing proves to be not only a technique for assessing learning progress and skill acquisition but primarily an effective teaching and learning tool facilitating students' engagement in the altered learning environment, reinforcing understanding and active learning the target material, stimulating various cognitive mechanisms and boosting retrieval and long-term retention. The results of the experiment demonstrate a strong positive effect of enhanced testing on academic performance and students' achievement, proved by the fact that the scores obtained by the students on formative tests correlate with the final summative examinations. The use of web-quizzing and access to digital learning resources in an online classroom setting characterized by the combination of teacher-guided, collaborative and personalized learning helps students to develop self-confidence, reduce anxiety and fear, and overcome the difficulties of the altered reality, arise the interest of students in learning and increase academic motivation in conditions of emergencies. This methodology can be interesting for teachers struggling to cope with the difficulties concerning education in emergencies caused by the Russian aggression.