Online Assessment and Feedback (Teacher Learner) Practices of ESL Teachers: A Case Study of Three Universities in Sikkim

Abstract

There have been many empirical studies on the online teaching of English language, especially during this ongoing Covid-19 pandemic times. This is yet another paper on it focused on Sikkim context which remains still unexplored. Sikkim being a small North Eastern State of India has not been able to make a notch of its own in the academic ESL/ELT territory. Since the onset of the pandemic the teachers all over the world are required to teach online being forced to adapt to the changing times. This paper is inspired from a similar study conducted by Mahapatra (2021).This paper makes an attempt to explore online assessment (OA) and feedback (Teacher Learner) practices (FP) of three ESL/ELT teachers teaching at three universities in Sikkim. The data collected through three methods such as analysis of feedback practices, thematic analysis on the basis of research questions of both interviews and classroom observation were triangulated. Despite, not being able to use all the assessment tools available, still with room for improvement they were actively and dedicatedly involved in teaching and assessing using some of the tools. Thus, a study as this is first of its kind in Sikkim and it has a scope of being conducted on a larger scale allowing verification of findings among the language teachers in similar settings.