Evaluation Methods in Teaching Translation by Saudi University Instructors under Coronavirus Pandemic

Abstract

Coronavirus pandemic has posed challenges in evaluating students’ performance in educational institutions all over the world. Therefore, university instructors may encounter some problems in evaluating their students fairly through online teaching since it was not an easy task before this worldly crisis. The current study aims at investigating the perspectives of instructors who teach translation courses at some Saudi universities towards the followed evaluation methods in teaching translation courses during Coronavirus pandemic. Two methods were used to collect data: simple observation and online questionnaire. The participants were 21 instructors from 10 Saudi universities. The findings of this study show that using machine translation and CAT tools by students in doing assessment tasks does not guarantee fairness among students during Coronavirus pandemic regardless of the nature of translation courses. In addition, online exams and assignments are less fair to show the individual differences among students compared with written exams before Coronavirus pandemic. To evaluate students’ performance in translation courses fairly, the participants of this study suggested some solutions such as modifying questions' patterns of some translation exams and assignments to cope with online teaching, emphasizing the importance of live sessions and online participation as assessment tasks for students during Coronavirus pandemic, using other evaluation methods such as live oral assessment, editing texts, multiple choice editing questions, etc. The study concludes with some recommendations for future research.