Authentic (Alternative) Assessments in Crisis Teaching: The Whats, the Whys and the Hows

The Center for Language Studies (CLS), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh organized an online workshop on Authentic (Alternative) assessment on 29 April, 2021in ZOOM platform. The speaker of the session, Dr. Julian Chen is a Senior Lecturer of Applied Linguistics/TESOL in the School of Education at Curtin University, Western Australia. The main focus of the workshop was to implement classroom-based assessments in online classrooms which will ensure student engagement. The session started with the opening remarks from Dr. Shaila Sultana, advisor of CLS.  Dr. Chen started the session by introducing the principles behind language assessment and discussed their related practicality and washback in the context of crisis teaching. Then the pros and cons of different performance-driven assessments were explored as plausible alternatives to traditional language testing. Participants experimented with different digital tools like Padlet, Google doc which can be used for formative assessment in live classes.  Teachers from different institutions and countries participated in the workshop. Fariha-Tuz-Zahra Chowdhury, lecturer,CLS, moderated the workshop as well as the question-answer session where participants discussed about the availability and the ease of different digital tool usage. The session ended with a vote of thanks from Razia Sultana, senior lecturer, CLS. The event was live-streamed on CLS facebook page.