Abstract:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all school buildings in Estonia were closed from the 16th of March 2020 and all the learning activities had to be carried out online. The e-learning environment used at Estonian Aviation Academy is Moodle and 50 % of courses already had a course site there before the pandemic. To conduct lectures, seminars and consultations mainly Zoom was used.

The academic staff had to decide whether they will continue as planned before the lockdown. Most of the lecturers decided to proceed with previously planned lectures and seminars however in an online format. Some of the courses were redesigned - the volume of the independent workload increased. It was clear that the assessment cannot be done in the classroom, therefore, it had to be decided how to assess the students in a new situation. Any of the lecturers decided to replace the differentiated assessment with non-differentiated one.

The same scenario unfolded in autumn 2020. After a couple of months, the classroom training was limited to only practical training and most of the courses were switched to online training again. This time the academic staff was well prepared.

In this study, it was analyzed how the assessment was affected by the pandemic and the final results in 2019 and 2020 were compared. Multiple-choice tests are widely used for assessment at the academy because it is also a standard method used in aviation training. There was a change in the place of examinations - from a controlled classroom to a web room, where lecturers no longer had the certainty that students would not use learning materials or other available resources.

What changes the lecturers made in the assessment of students during the COVID-19 period and how it affected the final grade were examined. The study is based on the data from the study information system and the feedback from the lecturers.

It is known that online courses are as effective as face-to-face courses and there is no difference in results. The final scores of 16 courses that were held in the spring semester and 15 courses that were held in the autumn semester were compared to previous year scores.

For about 60 % of the courses, where the differentiated assessment was used, the statistics did not indicate a significant change in grades. For about 40 % of the courses, there was a significant change in the final scores. In two courses the final results degraded and the final scores of the rest of the courses improved. Multiple-choice test(s) were used as an assessment method for the courses where the final results improved. Most of the lecturers decreased the time limit of the test and using learning materials could not be avoided.

Keywords:

COVID-19, distance learning, scores.