Analysis of Lecturers’ Opportunities and Challenges Regarding Formative Online Assessments at a University of Technology

During COVID-19, formative online assessments became widely employed at universities. Face-to-face academic activities were suspended, increasing the use of information and communications technology (ICT) and online assessments. University lecturers were forced to change their pedagogical strategies, teaching and learning paradigms, and evaluation procedures. The trend continued after the COVID-19 era and has become a norm at higher education institutions. This change brought about mixed feelings among lecturers as some saw opportunities while others experienced challenges. This empirical paper, therefore, discussed the opportunities and challenges experienced by lecturers when using formative online assessments. The theoretical framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) was used. Six purposively selected lecturers from the Faculty of Humanities at the Central University of Technology in South Africa were sampled and interviewed. The findings revealed that online formative assessments enabled lecturers to be more flexible on assessment schedules, meet various student demands and learning preferences, and give their students immediate feedback on their academic performances. The main challenges were formative online assessments’ validity, reliability, dishonesty, and academic integrity. The study underscores the importance of clear communication about academic integrity, making the audience feel the need for proactive measures to ensure the integrity of online assessments. The study recommended that lecturers should, among other things, make technical assistance resources available to students, explicitly convey expectations about academic integrity and cheating, and outline clear learning objectives for each assessment. This paper provides a significant contribution to the scholarship surrounding the opportunities and challenges that lecturers face when implementing formative online assessments at a university of technology. Keywords: COVID-19, Information Communications Technology (ICT), Formative Online Assessment, Student Teachers, Teacher Education.