Insights from emergency remote language assessment for a post-pandemic world

The COVID-19 pandemic perhaps produced the largest disturbance our educational systems have ever seen. Assessment was particularly impacted as systems and educators had to identify the most optimal and adequate accommodations to meet both external and classroom-based mandates. When in-person teaching was possible again, various assessment practices that emerged to meet the pandemic challenges were and, still, are in use. This study aims to add to the exploration of practices and competences of Higher Education teachers in the context of second language (L2) classroom assessment. Based on Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction, the study attempts to unpack the abrupt albeit creative ways that teachers used when moving into a formative language assessment orientation in their practice, and explain how this worked, what the challenges were and which of these are still relevant and implemented in university systems. The paper contributes to the discussion of the tendency observed among teachers to resort mainly to formative assessment paradigms to address the challenges imposed during the pandemic and what the field of language assessment has learned from it.