Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the deviated role of the online home-delivered assessment during the has been pandemic situation of the Covid-19 and also to investigate from the researcher s point of view and as a case study the experience of Palestine Technical University Kadoorie PTUK in assessing and evaluating English language introductory courses namely English 1 no 15200106 English 2 no 15200112 and Remedial English no 15200099 To achieve the purpose of this study the researcher followed a qualitative analytical approach which was implemented for the available related research which was casted in a relative chronological order in a survey-like orientation Findings of this study indicate that the role of the assessment process through the online home-delivered mode has been deviated and perverted because of the fact that a considerable number of students learners and exam-takers all over the world have been able to resort to various cheating practices and strategies that have negatively affected the maxims of reliability validity fairness and equality these maxims have long been supposed to be safeguarded by and through any assessment process and for them to be profoundly violated by the cheating practices in the online home- delivered assessment process resulted in doubtful educational judgments unreal grades misleading feedback and in addition an anticipated measurable learning outage and loss Findings of this study also indicate that cheating practices which have been enhanced by a considerable number of students learners and exam- takers have also yielded a moral and ethical outage because the tendency to cheat represents a perverted learning behavior that should be viewed to the educational process as dangerous and risky as that of the learning outage within the same context and as far as the investigative scope of this study is concerned this study concludes that the tendency to cheat not only violates the maxims upon which any assessment process is built but has also corrupted some human values that are supposed to be elevated by any assessment process such honesty righteousness equal opportunities and self-dependence Findings of this study indicate that the status of English language learning and teaching was so worrying if compared to the pre- pandemic situation especially in a foreign setting Findings of this study further indicates that the experience of Palestine Technical University Kadoorie PTUK in assessing some of the English language introductory courses during the has been Pandemic of Covid -19 has not been so different from those experiences of other universities and colleges all over the world Accordingly this study recommends further empirical and diagnostic research to shed more understanding towards this ethical and moral dilemma