L2 Assessment Fairness and Justice in Emergency: Students' Perceptions

Abstract

The present research seeks to determine the ESL learners' perceptions about fairness and justice in online assessment in emergency. Theories of fairness and justice are applied to investigate the students' perceptions through a questionnaire. Fairness in assessment means quality in assessment from the test takers' side, while justice refers to test design, development, administration, and use by the institutions. The study explores the fairness of online assessment in three constructs: informational, distributional, and procedural. Justice is divided into two primary constructs: justice in core language skills assessment and justice in the overall effectiveness of assessment in an emergency. The study results show that online assessments in case of emergency are fair regarding informational and distributional points of view. In contrast, in terms of procedural fairness, students opined that they could not appeal their score if they wanted to. They were not allowed to express their views about the assessment procedure and whether the assessment was made fairer in this way. Justice in core language skills' assessment in emergency shows that students were only assessed in writing skills in both typing and handwriting. In contrast, other skills like listening, speaking, and reading were not evaluated. As speaking and listening skills are not part of their course syllabus, they are not assessed, while reading is also not evaluated by the test takers. The justice in the overall effectiveness of assessment in emergency shows that statements of questions were accessible, online assessment assessed their critical thinking skills and checked their understanding of the topic. The online assessment also gives due importance to both subjective and objective assessments. The present study should interest learners, educationists, academics, and policymakers who are continually considering solutions to online educational assessment issues during crises.