Online Assessment Using a Secured Open-Source Platform in a Malaysian Public University Medical School: Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use and Acceptance

Online teaching, learning and assessment have become the new norms in higher education institutions, including medical schools. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical schools worldwide have been compelled to adopt the online mode of curriculum delivery for their students. This research aims to explore the perceptions of medical students in terms of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and acceptance of online assessments using a secure open-source Moodle platform at the School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia. The mixed-method design was used in this study. Furthermore, data were collected from medical students across year 1, year 2 and year 4. We utilised Google Forms to collect the data. Demographic and quantitative data were analysed using SPSS version 27, whereas qualitative data were analysed using ATLAS.ti version 9. Our study has found that the items for perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and acceptance have a mean score of more than 4.00 (positive areas) except for one item, which is “I prefer online assessment compared to paper-based assessment” with a mean score of 3.78. No item had a mean score below 3.00 (areas of concern). For the qualitative data, the total number of codes generated was 336. Eight subthemes emerged from the advantages theme, 11 from the disadvantages theme, and 11 from the suggestions theme. In conclusion, online assessment using Moodle is perceived as a feasible and acceptable replacement for traditional face-to-face assessments, especially for theory assessment. However, a few disadvantages may compromise the validity and reliability of the assessment. Thus, medical schools must try their best to address these issues to minimise the negative aspects of online assessment.