Student-Centered Online Assessment in Foreign Language Classes

Abstract

In 2020 educational institutions in many countries had to implement online learning due to quarantine restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The research aims to study the peculiarities of the distance learning technologies used by Ukrainian foreign language teachers for formative and summative assessment and their impact on students. At the end of 2020, a survey about online resources used for creating different types of tasks for foreign language classes in Ukraine was conducted by the authors of the study, and the main characteristics of the most popular online resources were analyzed. According to the survey, to create assessment tasks the majority of Ukrainian teachers use the following platforms: Kahoot, Google Forms, Quizlet, Classtime, Quizizz, Socrative, Quizalize, Gimkit, Blooket, Liveworksheets, and Wizerme. Some of these resources provide a strong element of competition that makes them perfect for formative assessment, while the others better suit summative assessment as they have a clear interface without distracting elements. When designing online tasks for the assessment, teachers should also take into consideration the possibilities online resources provide to reduce their students’ anxiety and stress caused by performing test tasks.