[2020 D2] An Integrable, Web-based Solution for Easy Assessment Management for Online Teaching _ Learning (1)

An Integrable, Web-based Solution for Easy Assessment Management for Online Teaching & Learning Nur Diyana Mohd Suhaimi Politeknik Seberang Perai Permatang Pauh, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia [email protected] Abstract—Conducting online classes and online assessment in full swing mode require educators to work smart in terms managing it and communicating with the students. This study examined student perceptions of how useful Google Apps for Education (GAFE) – Sheets was, in managing a semester 3 Communicative English course assessment: Mock Job Interview, how difficult or easy it was for students to interact with it, and how students ranked specific affordances of the technology in terms of its usability and usefulness. The finding of this study shows students find Google Sheets as beneficial in terms of document and folder sharing as well as all- time access to the document when booking presentation slot and referring the Webex link and password. It also shows that the usage of Google Sheets in DUE50032 class has affected their attitude towards “cloud computing”. Index Terms— Keywords: Assessment management; google sheets; online spreadsheets; student assessment; Google Apps for Education I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background Coronavirus was first identified somewhere in December 2020 in Wuhan, China. Within 3 months, it has become a pandemic that affect 188 countries, infecting more than 75millions people and killing more than 1.5 million people as of 15 November 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020). Since 18 March 2020, Malaysia’s federal government has been implementing a movement control order (MCO) as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. As a result of the MCO, all schools and academic institution have been closed. The order outlines that “all nurseries, government and private schools including boarding schools, international schools, training centres - Muslim schools in urban and rural areas - as well as primary, secondary and pre-university education institutions; public, private universities and vocational training centres must also be closed throughout the MCO period” (Education International, 2020). Department of Polytechnic and Community College Education (DPCCE) has taken the immediate action by adjusting the academic calendar to cater to the latest instruction by the ministry. Institutions under DPCCE had also taken the initiative to prepare their lecturers with knowledge regarding online teaching and learning by conducting online workshops, webinars and courses. For example, Centre of Technology for Teaching and Learning (CTTL) of Seberang Perai Polytechnic has taken the responsibility to equip their lecturers by conducting 1

online webinar, workshops and courses, as well as blasting information related to web2.0 tools through their blog, https://cttlpsp.blogspot.com/ and email. Classes for June 2020 academic session under Polytechnic initially went on with a few semesters underwent face-to-face class, and more than half was conducted online before resuming with a full face-to-face session for all semesters. However, a full face-to-face session scheduled to be on October 4, 2020 was not possible due to the current Covid-19 situation at that time. Hence, a new instruction was given where all of the students will need to attend their classes online until the end of the semester. With such situation, it also means that the assessments will need to be carried out online. Considering the number of subjects taken by the students, and the assessments for each of the subject, students were foreseen to be struggled to manage and track the assessments aside from having online fatigue due to the increase of their screen time. Lecturers therefore need to make sure that students fully understand the instruction given regarding the assessments and therefore, effective communication is essential so students will not misunderstand or misinterpret the instruction. 1.2 Effective Communication & DUE50032 Effective communication in learning is a process of transforming messages in the form of science and technology from educators to students (Kartikadarma, 2018), where students are able to understand the purpose of the message in accordance with predetermined objectives, thereby increasing the insight of science and technology and cause behavior change for the better. The communication between lecturer and students should be reciprocal and the instruction given to the students regarding the assessment should be crisp clear. Language learning anxiety is also well known to be existing among language learners, what more if they are about to be assessed orally. Therefore, a clear instruction, and easy access to the documents related to the assessment in one platform may help the students to plan better for their oral assessment. DUE50032 Communicative English 3 course in polytechnic consists of an assessment that need to be assessed orally which is Mock Job Interview. Students will be informed about the assessment at the beginning of the semester and a course outline consisting all the other assessments will also be given. When the time comes, students will be given a detailed instruction paper regarding the specific assessment. A week of time is given so the students will be able to revise and prepare for the assessment. Mock Job Interview assessment is an assessment to assess students’ ability to handle Job Interview questions as well as the ability to present oneself throughout the session. It can either be carried out individually, in pairs or in groups, depending on the lecturer. On the day of the assessment, students will undergo the session according to their booking slot. Each session will take approximately 20minutes of minimum time. This is the trickiest part; the booking slot need to be done much earlier in order for students to prepare for their slot, and for lecturers to provide details regarding the assessment date, time and meeting link. In normal classes, lecturers can print out a piece of paper containing booking date and time and students can fill in according to their availability. However, since the class is fully online 2

due to the pandemic, lecturers need to be creative in managing the assessment in order to help the students. 1.3 Challenges in Assessment Management & Web 2.0 Tools The pandemic situation urges the creativity in the usage of the available Web 2.0 Tools. Assessments that need to be assessed orally via web session like Mock Job Interview will need to be arranged as it will consume a lot of time. In Seberang Perai Polytechnic, there were lecturers using WhatsApp or Telegram to manage their assessment. They made numbered list of date and time, and students will need to copy, paste and insert their names. The problem with it was students copied an outdated message and filled in their details, with their friend’s details keyed in earlier been left out. Some other lecturers used Microsoft Excel to help managing the assessment booking slot. They shared the document in WhatsApp or Telegram, and the students downloaded and filled in their details, before sending it back in their social message group. This caused overlapping of information and the possibility of missing information is extremely high. However, Microsoft has introduced Microsoft Office Excel Online where it does all the basics of the desktop version while adding automatic cloud saving in OneDrive, and it has real-time collaboration tools that Office 365 and Office 2019 lack. There are limitations in the online version where you cannot create external data connections, you cannot find and replace, or no advanced charting features. This will limit the kind of input that lecturers can set for the students to fill in. WPS Office Spreadsheets is the true competitor for Microsoft Excel as it is the premium product that is also available for free if it is not purchased. However, the free version is ad supported, lasted around 10 seconds and only pop up when you try to print, save to PDF or some other more specific tools. This is rather quite annoying when students are filling in the details or editing their details and suddenly pop ups appear. 1.4 Google Spreadsheet Google Spreadsheet is a powerful tool to manage student assessment. It is more than a Web 2.0 version of Microsoft Excel as it performs many functions that are not available in Excel. Google Sheets is Google's cloud-based and runs in a web browser, so it's platform independent and can be run on several operating systems. Google Sheets saves everything in Google Drive, therefore your important data remains safe. As with Google's other office tools, Sheets features real-time collaboration that allows multiple users to edit a document at the same time. Users can see the cursor position of other people in the document, see what they're doing as they're doing it, and chat right in the document window (Brandon Vigliarolo of TechRepublic, 2020). One of the many benefits of Google Sheets that could be useful to educators is it also offers under Google Apps for Education (GAFE) where it integrates all the other apps like Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Forms and Google Meets in one Google account in Google Drive. Even if the students are not GAFE users, they can still use the user-shared document, or using their existing Gmail account. Students may fill in the details simultaneously as it is real-time 3

recorded. Lecturers can help the students to manage their presentation slot and provide the meeting link for their ease of reference. Figure 1: Mock Job Interview booking slot in Google Spreadsheets Figure 1 shows the document used by the researcher in order to help students managing their assessment. It contains ‘Task Description’ document, academic session, class and table that consists of several columns namely ‘Numb’, ‘Name’, ‘Registration Number’, ‘Telephone Number (WhatsApp)’, ‘Slot Date/Time’, as well as ‘Meeting Link/Password’. The researcher initially provided a table that has all the columns but filled in only in ‘Numb’ and ‘Slot Date/Time’. The ‘Slot Date/Time’ column was filled with dates and times ranging on different dates and time of the day as to provide flexibility for the students to choose. Students cannot make any changes in this column as the researcher has restricted the access to only the owner of the document. The document was then shared in the class’s Telegram group, and students started to fill in their details according to their availability. Once they filled in the details, the researcher provided them their unique meeting link and password in ‘Meeting Link/Password’ column. From there onwards, students can access and refer to the meeting link and password anytime they want until the day of their assessment. It helps them to refer to their assessment details in case they forgot. With the capabilities of doing so much in Google Sheets, the students who are yet to be assessed or need to redo but pending were highlighted with different colours, with a new date and time. Using the same document link, student can access to the document and refer to the updated date and time anytime and anywhere they want. 4

Figure 2: Different shades of highlights to show assessment status II LITERATURE REVIEW Assessment, teaching, and learning are inextricably linked as each informs the others. Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not the goals of education are being met. Polytechnics have flexibility in how they assess students for DUE50032 course. Based on Coursework Item Specification Table and Test Item Specification Table, assessment items are developed and lecturers can decide what assessment information they collect and analyse, and how they use it. It is well known that L2 anxiety exists and it may affect students’ performance during the assessment process. Test anxiety has been defined as one element of general anxiety composed of cognitive attentional processes that interferes with competent performance in academic or assessment situations (Spielberger & Vagg, 1995 cited in Shi, 2012). In language testing, speaking exams may compose the most challenging and stressful part of the testing. Students are tested one-by-one or two as a pair and are expected to talk about on a given task (Sayin, 2015). Thus, students are affected by various factors such as concentration, self-confidence, limited time, and the attitudes of the assessors during the test (Paker & Höl, 2012). Tests and exams compose a significant part of school life and bring fear and stress as a result of anxiety for students (Sayin, 2015). Most people experience anxiety that is present only during a particular situation or incident, which can be considered passing, and ideally will diminish over time (Shomoossi & Kassaian, 2009). One of the many ways to reduce the assessment anxiety is by helping them to manage their assessment by providing a reference platform so they will not be anxious looking for the meeting link and password, or even the 5

correct date and time of the assessment. By doing so, students will not have to bother asking their lecturer again and again on their assessment date and time, which sometimes happen regardless the time of the day. MacIntyre and Gardners (1991) review of the research methods and measures concluded that it is the state anxiety which causes situation-specific language anxiety (cited in Shomoossi & Kassaian, 2009). Students are believed to experience anxiety before their assessment. Spreadsheets programming is widely used and it is possible for a user to be a spreadsheets programmer without any training in programming, unlike other programming languages (Abraham, Burnett, and Erwig, 2009). Students can organize their assessment schedule using spreadsheets that is accessible and available all the time, across devices. This is possible when cloud computing is involved. Sultan (2010) brings out the need to incorporate Cloud Computing strategies in educational institutes to innovate and realize the true potential of techniques such as web services, virtualization and grid computing. The relevance of Cloud Computing becomes increasingly important as it is expected to offer flexibility and pay as you go cost structure. According to Brown and Daniel (2015), Google solutions create the powerful computing infrastructure that keeps today’s higher ed communities humming. Researchers can speed up analysis from days to minutes, working seamlessly across departments and data sets. Students and faculty can collaborate easily and securely across disciplines and campuses. And campus staff can work more efficiently and effectively. Google Spreadsheet is an online equivalence of Microsoft Excel and can be used to store data collected from Google Forms (Mansor, 2011). Fransen, Kocher, and Kempf (2011), for example, use script editor within Google Spreadsheets to automate e-mail message to users who have filled the Google form. Google Spreadsheets offers an opportunity to help students managing their assessment schedule. Grossman (2007) unique view is that Google Spreadsheets is not an application, but rather a programming language where applications can be developed. III METHODOLOGY The methodology of this study is as described below where it is divided into three sections. Those sections are (i) research subjects; (ii) the data gathering instrument; and (iii) the data collection procedure. (i) The research subjects Convenience sampling procedure was used in this study where a class of 40 semester 3 Diploma in Business Management students were selected as the subjects for this study. However, since this study used non-probability volunteer sample, only 35 students responded to the instrument. These students took DUE50032 Communicative English 3 course, where Mock Job Interview is one of the assessment that need to be conducted orally. (ii) The data gathering instrument An instrument was designed to collect the data needed for this study. The instrument, which was adapted from Brown M.E and Daniel L.H (2015) had four sections; Section 1: Access and Use, Section 2: Function and Utility, Section 3: Effectiveness and Section 4: Attitudes. Basic demographic information like student gender was included in the final section, however was not 6

compulsory to be answered by the subject. The independent variable was Google Sheets and the data was collected through a survey container which was Google Forms. The data gathered was then analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software, where the result was then generated. Since this was a cross sectional study, the data is served as preliminary. (iii) The data collection procedure The students were briefed on the assessment and explained about the online booking slot during online class. They were then given the link to the document through the class group in Telegram. Students were given only two days to fill in their details in the desired slot. Once they had filled in, the researcher provided them their unique meeting link and password. Students were given access to the documents throughout the assessment period. Once they had been assessed, their rows turned green to indicate status of completion or red to indicate pending. After all of them had been assessed, students were given an online questionnaire via Google Forms to find out their perceptions of how useful Google Sheets was in managing online assessment, how difficult or easy it was for students to interact with it, and how students ranked specific affordances of the technology in terms of its usability and usefulness. Once completed, those questionnaires were collected and then analysed using SPSS. The findings of the study will be described further in section IV below. IV FINDINGS The findings gathered are as presented below. They are grouped under 4 sections. They are (a) access and use, (b) function and utility, (c) effectiveness, and (d) attitudes. a) Access and Use Platforms Used to Access Google Sheets 1, 2% 15, 31% Personal Desktop/Laptop Smartphone Tablet Device 32, 67% Figure 3: Platforms used to access Google Sheets A total of 48 responses were gathered for this question with few respondents responded to one or more options. Majority of the respondents or 67% used Smartphone to access to the Google Sheets document, while only 2% used tablet device. 7

Locations When Accessing Google Sheets 2, 5% 1, 3% 3, 7% Home Campus Classroom Campus elsewhere Other places when the house has poor internet network 34, 85% Figure 4: Locations when accessing Google Sheets Figure 4 shows the location when students accessed the document. This question enabled students to give more than 1 response. A total of 40 responses were gathered with a majority of 85% responded that they access the document at home. This is understandable as the government was imposing Restricted Movement Control Order while the assessment was carried out. The lowest response is other places when the house has poor internet network with a percentage of 3%. b) Function and Utility How Text was Entered (using Smartphone/Tablet) I used a voise recording app 2 I used a Bluetooth keyboard 4 I typed on the touch screen 34 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Figure 5: How text was entered when using smartphone or tablet 8

Figure 5 above shows how respondents entered text when using smartphone or tablet. Students may respond to more than one option. A total of 40 responses were collected and majority of 34 responses typed on the touchscreen to enter text in the document when using smartphone or tablet. 1, 3% Primary Browser Used to Access Google Sheets 0, 0% 0, 0% 0, 0% 7, 20% Internet Explorer 27, 77% Mozilla Firefox Google Chrome Safari Opera Other Figure 6: Primary browser used to access Google Sheets 77% of the respondents used Google Chrome as the primary browser to access to the document according to figure 6 above, while 20% used Safari. Since the data gathered earlier shows that majority of the students accessed the document using smartphone, followed by laptop, it could probably means that these browsers are the most downloaded and used browser. Frequency of Google Sheets Usage Prior to The Class 3, 9% 3, 9% 18, 51% Rarely Regularly Never Frequently 11, 31% Figure 7: Frequency of Google Sheets usage prior to the class 9

Figure 7 above shows the frequency of Google Sheets usage prior to the class. Slightly more than half of the respondents responded that they rarely use Google Sheets before this class. Only 9% of the respondents said that they have used it frequently and never. We can conclude that majority of the respondents are familiar with Google Sheets before this class. c) Effectiveness Functions of Google Sheets 16 15 14 13 12 11 11 10 9 9 9 9 1 (most useful) 2 88 8 3 4 87 5 6 (least useful) 6 44 4 33 22 2 1 1 1 11 0 0 Ability to share Ability to access Ability to return Ability to write documents with documents from to an earlier on the documents others any device version of the connected to the document internet Figure 8: Functions of Google Sheets Figure 8 shows the functions of Google Sheets that the respondents found most or least useful.15 respondents feel that Google Sheets is most useful due to the ability to share documents with others. The second highest function to be found most useful is the ability to access documents from any device connected to the internet with 13 respondents. 10

Aspects of The Use of Google Sheets for Class Purposes 25 23 20 20 16 17 17 15 14 13 10 9 Very easy Somewhat easy 5 Somewhat difficult Very difficult 53 2 0 10 0 0 0 Visual Interface Styling a document Sharing a Adding text in the document with document another user or the instructor/lecturer Figure 9: Aspects of the use of Google Sheets for class purposes From Figure 9 above, we can tell that most of the respondents believe that it is either very easy or somewhat easy to use Google Sheets for class purpose. The respondents believe that Google Sheets’ visual interface, styling document, sharing a document with another user other instructor/lecturer and adding text in the document is rather easy. d) Attitudes Possibility to Use Google Sheets 0, 0% 7, 20% 15, 43% Yes, definitely Maybe Probably No 13, 37% Figure 10: Possibility to use Google Sheets Figure 10 above shows the possibility of the respondents to use Google Sheets in the future/ almost half of the respondents (43%) responded that they will definitely use it in the future, 37% said maybe they will use it and 20% responded they probably use it in the future. 11

Effect on Attitude Toward \"Cloud Computing\" 13, 37% Yes No 22, 63% Figure 11: Effect on attitude toward “cloud computing” According to figure 11 above, 63% of the respondents said that the usage of Google Sheets has changed their attitude towards cloud computing while 37% said no. Benefit of Using Google Sheets 8, 23% 18, 51% Document/folder sharing 9, 26% Collaborative tools (comments, versioning) 24/7 access with networked device Figure 12: Benefit of using Google Sheets According to figure 12, slightly more than half of the respondents said that Google Sheets is beneficial in terms of document/folder sharing, 26% said that it is beneficial as collaborative tools and 23% said that it is beneficial as it can be accessed 24/7 with network device. 12

Experience Using Google Sheets Good 2, 6% 0, 0% Very good Bad 3, 8% Average Very bad 7, 20% 23, 66% Figure 13: Experience of using Google Sheets According to figure 13, a total of 86% of the respondents said that the experience of using Google Sheets was either good or very good, with 66% of the respondents responded good while 20% responded very good. Age Responses 18-20 33 21-23 1 Prefer not to say 1 Table 1: Age Gender Responses Female 26 Male 8 Prefer not to say 1 Table 2: Gender Table 1 and Table 2 are the respondents’ demographic data. These questions were not mandatory to be answered by the respondents. However, all of 35 respondents responded to the questions. As can be seen from table 1, 33 of the respondents ranged between 18 to 22 years of age, 1 respondent ranged between 21 to 23 years of age and 1 respondent preferred not to say. According to table 2, 26 of the respondents are female and 8 respondents are male, while 1 preferred not to say. 13

Findings reported in this study illustrate that 91.4% of the respondents used smartphone to access the document. 42.9% of the respondents find it to be most useful to share the document with others. When asked about the use of Google Sheets in future, 42.9% respondents said that they will definitely use it in the future. This indicates that the students found Google Sheets to be beneficial in helping them to manage their assessment schedule. This findings is also similar to Brown and Daniel (2005) which states that Google Apps for Education is relatively easy to use for most users. V Conclusion and recommendation As a result of these findings, we can consider Google Sheets to be useful and user-friendly tool available for educators and students to manage the assessments. Although the study found Google Sheets to be useful and easy, it did not assess how the lecturers found Google Sheets in terms of its usability and ease of use This initial study in assessing student’s perceptions toward web-based assessment management shows an interesting finding. However, since the sample size is rather small and the data collected is limited, hence the generalizability of it is not possible. Another limitation is online fatigue. Since classes were being conducted fully online including assessments (both core and elective courses), students’ screen time increased and indirectly forced them to focus throughout the online session. It is recommended that this study can be conducted on a larger scale where comparison of contexts can be conducted. . This conclusion also demonstrates that there is a need to introduce Google Sheets. The decision to use Google Sheets in the classroom should also be inclusive in managing the assessment, especially when oral assessment is concerned. It is hoped that this small scale research would initiate other English language lecturers to use Google Sheets in helping the students to manage their assessment better. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The researchers are indebted to all those who participated and contributed to this study, especially the participants, as well as those who supported to the success of this study. Their cooperation and deeds will always be remembered and appreciated. 14

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