Higher-order thinking e-assessment in online EFL courses: Swedish instructors’ perceptions and experiences

Abstract

Previous research indicates that higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) have an important role in L2 learning. In an online learning context, e-assessment tasks are ideally designed to target these skills. A recently conducted study by Johansson (2020) indicates that HOTS e-assessment is relatively common in Swedish online English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses. Generally, instructors’ perceptions of HOTS and HOTS e-assessment have been described as important for the implementation of these skills in assessment tasks; however, little is known about this in the online EFL context. Hence, the aim of the present study was to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of online EFL instructors’ views on HOTS e-assessment and the challenges of this. To investigate this, a questionnaire was sent out to university instructors working with online EFL courses. The study found that most of the instructors intended to target HOTS through e-assessment tasks and that there is a general agreement about what constitutes such skills. The majority of the instructors had not been offered training in how to target students’ HOTS, but had taken own initiatives to this kind of training. Moreover, the main challenges in developing HOTS e-assessment were instructors’ lack of time and technical skills.