Alternative Learning Modalities in Education amidst Pandemic

Ador P. Layug

Assessment is a mechanism that monitors learners’progress – what they know and able to do – though sound performance evaluation and feedback. Now more than ever, the use of effective and responsive assessment in the academe is continuously challenged by the current crisis brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The use of alternative assessment breaks the barrier on the traditional paper-and-pencil test orientation in the teaching-learning process.

It focuses on student-led, performance-based, and inclusive tools, strategies, and activities responsive to diversify instruction. It therefore, fulfills further the mandate of education where teachers are the facilitators and learners are the actors in the process.

Unfortunately, the present situation with the Coronavirus pandemic has made it difficult for teachers to assess the learners’performances, either in modular, online, or blended instruction.

As I observed, as a master teacher in Department of Education (DepEd), many teachers are still at a lost in terms of providing quality assessment among learners.

Though there are training conducted for such purpose, the fact that this is the first time that a pandemic has greatly affect the delivery of education in the 21st-century, there are still apprehensions that teachers thought of.

But as the mantra of DepEd reflects, “the quality of education cannot exceed the quality of teachers,” the teaching professionals play an integral role in the success of the delivery of education in this time of emergency.

As the curriculum implementors, they are tasked to be flexible in responding to the learners’needs by empowering themselves to carry out quality instruction.

More so our Department issued the DO. No. 31 s. 2020 which talks about the Interim guidelines for assessment and grading in light of the BE-LCP this guideline will give each and every member of the new normal of teaching learning process to assess the students’progress by engaging in the delivery of quality education.

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The author is Teacher III at Sto. Tomas National High School, Sasmuan, Pampanga.