| dc.description.abstract | Public Universities in Kenya have embraced lCTs in the management of educational
programs. In 2007, Maseno University set up an e-campus to facilitate online delivery of
education programmes to students within the country, East Africa and beyond.
Assessments play an essential part in education as it assists one in finding the quality of
learning and examining what the student knows. The increase in students' enrollments in
public universities has put pressure on lecturers who cannot mark and give timely feedback to
students. The growing need to carter for adult learners living in far off places, to improve the
operational reliability of assessment processes, to provide quicker end to end services, to
mitigate the decreasing availability of expert assessment personnel, to control overheads and
running costs, the maturing user capability and increasing availability of technological
options and solutions are driving online assessments in public universities.
The researcher carried out an extensive review of online assessments in public universities,
identified challenges that students, lecturers and institutions face in the use of online
assessments, established the extent to which online assessments can be implemented in public
universities and developed an implementation framework for online assessments.
An implementation gap exists between the desired online assessments systems and how to get
there. This gap prevents public universities from developing an effective online assessment
plan to yield meaningful results at the student, course, program and college levels. To
alleviate this, Service oriented framework for assessment (SOFA), Sabbah model, Modular
assessment system for modem learning settings (MASS), E-assessment procedures checklist
(EPC) and Lloyd framework were compared and contrasted using a Venn diagram, and Lloyd
framework was then extended by incorporating key components from the frameworks studied
to develop an implementation framework. Data was collected through the use of
questionnaires distributed to students and lecturers of Maseno University, focused interviews
were conducted with the lecturers to offer method triangulation.
The results of the study showed that summative assessment is the main form of online
assessments used in public universities; the online assessments offered are relevant to
learning outcomes since they are aligned to the curriculum. Numerous challenges including
lack of human capacity, unreliability of the technology and high costs of implementations
plague the use of online assessments in public universities. The facilities necessary for
implementation of online assessments were found to be inadequate in public universities. The
Extended Lloyd framework was tested and validated through the research conducted and was
found to be adequate for adoption in the implementation of online assessments across public
universities.
The study revealed that public universities must create awareness, provide necessary facilities
for online assessments and train user support team to encourage the use of online assessment,
however, further research is necessary to enhance the credibility of online assessments
practice. | en |
