Abstract:

In a fast-paced digital world, emerging technology trends in education give the instructors new opportunities to assess their students’ performance and learning effectively. Currently, online tests are used as an essential part of an online course or classroom teaching in many universities. The study focuses on the question of the time limits set for the online tests designed within the Moodle-based course “English for architects” for students learning English for specific purposes in a technical university. The aim of the study is to define how much time a student should be given to take a particular type of online test, depending on the assessment goal the instructors assign. As the online course “English for architects” is a part of a regular teaching process in the university, all the tests there can be subdivided into (1) practical – supposed to be homework and self-study, (2) progress – as a checkpoint taken twice in a semester, and (3) final – held in the end of the semester.

Data was collected through the questionnaire and quantitative research technique was applied. The questionnaire consisted of close-ended questions and it used a 5-point Likert scale. The questions are aimed to find out how much time can be specified for a particular type of tests for obtaining better learning outcomes and assessment. The findings of the study revealed that the respondents – 24 university English language teachers – do not see strict rules for students in taking a practical test. An instructor may include questions for checking only one type of trained language skills or several, and this fact influences the time set for passing a test. Moreover, some respondents do not recommend to set limits for practical tests at all. In contrast, checkpoints and final tests are to be strictly time-limited and content-arranged aimed at assessing different language skills and last around an hour but not more than a 90-minute lesson. It is necessary to mention that an important aspect of communicative competence formation – speaking – arguably cannot be checked by means of Moodle tests and in this case 30–40 minutes left after passing tests may be spent to assess speaking skills of a group of 12–15 students.

The importance of the study is accounted for the necessity to help online tests developers to manage testing time better in order to get the instrument for more effective assessment and evaluation of their students. Therefore, the presented findings seem to be useful for online foreign language course development and improvement.

Keywords:

Foreign language teaching, Moodle, timed online tests, English for specific purposes, assessment.