This paper presents a cross-sectional study that demonstrates how King Abdulaziz University has responded to the lockdown imposed by the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of students and faculty towards assessment that had to take place online due to physical or social distancing rules and lockdowns. A descriptive mixed-method study was conducted with two different self-administered questionnaires that were developed for students and faculty, respectively. A total of 547 responses were received from undergraduate students and 213 from faculty. The main finding suggests the need for a multilevel approach to the problems of cheating and plagiarism, including raising student awareness and ethics, training teachers to detect cheating methods, and institutions activating their code of practice and applying severe sanctions on those who engage in such practices.

(1) This study demonstrates how a Saudi university has responded to the COVID-19 lockdown in order to examine the success factors and highlight any challenges. The main purpose was to determine the perceptions of students and faculty towards emergency online distance learning from a teaching and learning perspective; (2) A cross-faculty study was conducted: two different self-administered questionnaires were developed for students and faculty, respectively. In addition, data was collected from official reports; (3) The results show that students had a more positive perception of e-Learning despite the difficulties that they may have faced, while faculty results leaned slightly towards a negative perception. However, there was not a definite positive or negative perception, depending on the aspect of teaching that was being evaluated. The study also indicated that faculty and students’ gender had no significant effect on their perceptions. Overall results showed that the university performed well in accordance with three of the five pillars of online learning quality framework in terms of student satisfaction, access and scalability. On the other, improvements are needed to achieve better results for faculty satisfaction and learning effectiveness; (4) The findings present a number of suggestions for increasing satisfaction to improve the online learning experience post COVID-19.

Distance education is becoming more demanding at universities all around the world in general and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in particular, than ever before. This study aimed at highlighting the students’ perceptions of cheating on distance learning at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). The study will further explore the ways they use to cheat, causes for cheating, and some solutions to minimize cheating. This study was conducted at the end of the second semester in 2019. Data was collected from 57 female distance learning students who graduated from the English Language Department (ELD) at KAU. A mixed-methods research design was adopted in this study via a custom designed, fifteen closed ended and one, open ended item questionnaire. The quantitative section was analysed by frequency and percentages and the open-ended questions were analysed thematically. The results indicated that the majority of female students cheated by helping each other, obtain the correct answers from another student or send the correct responses to all their classmates. Another way which some students admitted they used was using electronic websites to copy and paste the answers in the test’s screen. The study further concluded that reasons for cheating in distance learning programs were due to technical problems, frequent absence of virtual classes, and wanting grades, not necessarily knowledge. Recommendations for the possible solutions to eliminate cheating, the participants recommended increasing the students’ awareness of cheating policy and finding solutions to technological issues.

As one of the most popular Online Student Response Systems (OSRSs), Socrative is defined as a web-based platform that can be accessed using any browser that is connected to the Internet (Mork, 2014). In an attempt to guide EFL teachers on their journey towards transforming their traditional paper-based formative assessment into using electronic tools, this study seeks to present the expectations and attitudes of Saudi female learners towards the use of mobile-based formative assessment. The study aims to investigate the attitudes of EFL learners towards the use of mobilebased tests in English classes using Socrative as a model for assessment. For this purpose, 35 female students completed all three stages of the experiment; initial survey, Socrative quiz, postexperiment survey. The participants are enrolled in one of the courses of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) offered by the Preparatory Year Program at a Saudi state university. The findings of the study indicate that almost half of the participants preferred paper-based over mobile-based tests in the pre-experiment survey; after the experiment, however, the students changed their preferences in favor of mobile-based tests. The study also highlighted different advantages, reported by the participants, of using Socrative as a tool for formative assessment in EFL classrooms. The study recommends that teachers implement the use of (OSRSs) in their classrooms as they have many pedagogical benefits for language learners.

As one of the most popular Online Student Response Systems (OSRSs), Socrative is defined as a web-based platform that can be accessed using any browser that is connected to the Internet (Mork, 2014). In an attempt to guide EFL teachers on their journey towards transforming their traditional paper-based formative assessment into using electronic tools, this study seeks to present the expectations and attitudes of Saudi female learners towards the use of mobile-based formative assessment. The study aims to investigate the attitudes of EFL learners towards the use of mobile-based tests in English classes using Socrative as a model for assessment. For this purpose, 35 female students completed all three stages of the experiment; initial survey, Socrative quiz, post-experiment survey. The participants are enrolled in one of the courses of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) offered by the Preparatory Year Program at a Saudi state university. The findings of the study indicate that almost half of the participants preferred paper-based over mobile-based tests in the pre-experiment survey; after the experiment, however, the students changed their preferences in favor of mobile-based tests. The study also highlighted different advantages, reported by the participants, of using Socrative as a tool for formative assessment in EFL classrooms. The study recommends that teachers implement the use of (OSRSs) in their classrooms as they have many pedagogical benefits for language learners.