Dr. SOEURN Visal
COVID-19 has rapidly altered the daily routine of Cambodian citizens. One of the major changes for children, teenagers and young adults has been the educational transition from physical class learning to remote learning or online learning. The new learning context of Academic Year 2019-2020 was very challenging, particularly for students with limited internet connectivity. UP uses Google Meet and UPOP – its very own online platform – as part of synchronous and asynchronous learning and assessing, which represented a new challenge for some of our lecturers who had not been previously trained in online teaching or who had previously used other online systems such as Google Classroom, Google Forms, Zoom etc. Nonetheless, the result of online learning and teaching has been very good, based on the feedback and surveys undertaken by both lecturers and students alike.
UP has strengthened assessment in many ways with multiple methods of assessment being conducted online and have included both formative and summative assessments to successfully measure levels of cognition and understanding. At the beginning of each semester, lecturers submit their assessment plans based on the criteria stated in UP’s Assessment Policy. Each Faculty reviews and gives feedback on the Assessment Plan. After the Assessment Plan is approved, the academic staff and Course Coordinators will follow up the assessment activity with lecturers throughout each semester. With assistance from other supporting departments and offices, each Faculty completes online assessments using UPOP.
We are very proud that during this challenging period while many schools in Cambodia are closed UP has been able to keep delivering an excellent academic service to our students. Here at UP, our journey is one that focuses on quality, and our students being in the best position to receive a great education when compared to our neighboring countries in ASEAN. This is an achievement that we share in, alongside our hard-working colleagues across UP. We believe that the quality of our online deliver will continuing to improve as we enter our next Academic Year, in 2020-2021. And of course, we are ready to reopen our physical classes as soon as we are allowed.
