ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the assessment methods and collaborative learning for a university EFL academic writing class in Thailand following the changes necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic after all educational institutions in Thailand moved teaching and learning online. The authors soon realized that “changing the venue” and switching to the online mode meant that face-to-face collaborative learning became non-viable. In response, peer evaluation was replaced by self-evaluation and a formal test by a group project, but the results of using self-evaluation in academic writing was less than satisfactory, as the students tended to not take self-evaluation so seriously and did not effectively use the self-evaluation guidelines when revising their texts. Employing the reflective practice approach, the authors concluded that the primary causes were the overdependence on teachers’ feedback, typical in the Thai context, and the lack of student training in self-evaluation. However, the students tended to perform well in group report projects. The insights from the practitioners’ reflections shed light on ways to improve the assessment methods used to foster autonomous learning of academic writing, in online and distance learning, and also in transferring the lessons learned to physical classrooms.
