Equity in performance assessment
While online education has been an option for some programs and courses
before, during the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown of entire
institutions, the pandemic has forced many institutions to offer online
education without proper planning. This shift was not easy and presented
challenges to both the instructors and the students. While the academic
activities could continue, many universities recognised the stressful
transitions and sub-optimal situation for everyone involved.
Consequently, some universities such as University of Manitoba have
relaxed grading for the ongoing courses allowing late withdrawal without
penalty. Additionally the following explanation was added to the
transcripts: “Due to the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on
academic performance, students in Winter 2020 were given the option to
retain their original grade, exclude their grade from GPA calculations
(grades marked with an *), convert their letter grade to Pass (P*) or
Voluntarily Withdraw (VW) from the course”. Similar measure was also
taken by the USA National Board of Medical Examiners shifting from
numeric score to pass/fail grade for students taking the United States
Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 (Whelan, 2020). The impact
on ongoing research of graduate students and professors is more
considerable as most non-COVID-19-related research activities were
halted as a direct consequences of the lockdowns (Nassisi et al., 2020).
While researchers are encouraged to engage in other activities such as
writing review papers and/or planning future experiments, it is
critically important that their performance assessment considers these
exceptional circumstances.