The New Normal: Online Classes and Assessments during the COVID-19 Outbreak

The current quantitative research paper intends to investigate students' and teachers' experiences and opinions about virtual learning and testing and how remote learning has affected their teaching and learning and assessments during the pandemic. To find out the effects of the online platform on classes and assessments, two sets (one for students and the other for teachers) of questionnaires were formulated comprising three sections; first, about demographic information of the participants, second (variables, 1-8) about online classes and third (variables, 9-17) about online assessments. The questionnaires were administered among 150 participants- 90 students and 60 teachers from five countries: Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, England and Canada. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)-version 26.0 was used to analyze the data statistically. The results showed that both students and teachers faced challenges in adopting online teaching, yet they had to do so out of necessity because they did not experience online teaching especially online assessment up to the standard of face-to-face (in person in classrooms). Moreover, the research findings did not show much significant difference between teachers' and students' experiences and opinions towards online classes and assessment across all five countries. Furthermore, the study offers some implications based on the findings. The researchers see that blended learning might be the future of education. Unified online curricula and learning management systems, competency in using various digital tools/platforms, availability of stable Internet connection, innovative and engaging teaching strategies and proctored exams and a variety of formative/summative assessments are required in order to maintain the quality of learning and testing, and prepare educational institutions and teachers to meet any challenge in this unpredictable world.