Pixel International Conferences

Higher Education systems are currently experiencing a new challenge as distance learning through the internet seems to attract the interest of worldwide prospective students. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are the frontrunners of this online massive approach to formal education but a concern that is present, endangering their success, is the reliability of assessment and grading of such courses. This affects the interest and motivation of the students on such educational systems when they have education as the leitmotif for a profession. As society widely accepts orthodox Academia as the paradigm of sound assessment, especially regarding professional areas such as Medicine or Engineering, the perspective of the Academia should influence the societal trust on the online grading methodologies. A recent study explored the general perception of orthodox Academia regarding the most common online grading methodologies used in MOOCs and the ‘comfort zone’ of including such methodologies on orthodox courses. Departing from those results, this work explores how trustworthy those online methodologies are to Medical and Biomedical Professors from orthodox Academia, in which circumstances would they be willing to use such methods and the constraints they consider mandatory in order to assure the soundness of evaluation of their students, the recognition of the institution as valid evaluator, and the social acceptance of future medical and biomedical professionals.  

Keywords: Distance learning; Online grading; Academic Assessment; Medicine; Biomedicine;