An Effect of Assessment Delivery Methods on Accounting Students’ Grades in an E-learning Environment

Abstract

The study aims to investigate whether a change in the delivery of assessment methods, from a full online assessment to a hybrid assessment, affected accounting students' grades during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study also considers whether the change undertaken to assessment methods met their targets of improving assessment practices and maintaining academic integrity. The statistical analysis technique used was an independent sample t-test, chi-square, and ANOVA. A total of 473 final grades (fully online assessment = 224, hybrid assessment = 249) were collected to achieve the study purpose. The findings show a statistically significant difference in the final course grades between the two assessment methods. In each course, students scored significantly lower on the hybrid assessment compared to students who took the fully online assessment, indicating that changes in the assessment delivery method affected students' grades and that the shift to hybrid assessment had a positive effect assessment system. Additionally, the performance of males and females is too different; female students have made higher grades than peer males in both methods in each course, indicating that the grades between males and females are different. This research recommends that the use of a hybrid assessment approach would help in providing a unique educational environment and this approach of varied assessment can enable lecturers to find out student abilities in accounting courses and maintain academic integrity.