Examining the e-assessment literacy of Iranian English as a Foreign Language teachers

It is critical for language teachers to be assessment literate. At present, many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers are constantly integrating Internet English lessons into their class programmes simply because they have witnessed the numerous advantages offered by this teaching and learning medium. The present mixed-methods study aimed at exploring Iranian EFL teachers’ e-assessment literacy. The participants of the study consisted of 66 EFL instructors who were conveniently selected from different universities. Out of this number, 7 EFL instructors voluntarily participated in the interview. To collect the data, the E-assessment Literacy Questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were used. The quantitative procedures included calculating the frequency and percentage of the participants’ answers to the items of the questionnaire. With regard to the qualitative procedure, MAX Qualitative Data Analysis (MAXQDA) 10 was used to expose the qualitative data to thematic analysis. The quantitative results showed that most of the EFL teachers believed that they were literate in e-assessment and had positive perceptions towards e-assessment. As revealed by the qualitative results, several themes were extracted for EFL teachers’ perceptions towards e-assessment. Finally, some advantages and disadvantages were extracted for Iranian EFL teachers’ e-assessment literacy. The quantitative results showed that 64.1% of EFL teachers believed that they were literate in e-assessment. Finally, the results showed that the Iranian EFL teachers had the highest mean on competence in e-assessment, while their lowest mean was on being aware of e-assessment. The findings have some implications for EFL teacher education material developers, teachers and researchers.