Between the Normative and the Interpretive Approach: Student Performance Online Evaluation Challenges in Journalism and Communication Higher Education

In times of pandemic, higher education programmes had to switch quite unexpectedly from educational strategies and techniques that applied within a classical kind of college environment, to the online platforms. If all sorts of platforms proved feasible for seminars, in the case of courses and evaluation activities, some difficulties were encountered and, consequently, demanded special concern and conjugated efforts to roll things out through the thick and thin of a period that required a high level of adaptability on the part of higher education leadership and management, as well as on the part of professors and students. A survey addressed to the students and to the professors at the University of Bucharest, College of Journalism and Communication Studies revealed intriguing information regarding our main topic, that of the online student performance evaluation challenges in the journalism and communication higher education in Romania. The response of the majority of the professors to such an unexpected turnout in education within the context of the pandemics was that of a spectacularly more flexible approach mostly to the assessment of student performance, our topic at stake for this research endeavour. Within our research focus, the student and professor preference for measurement and for a normative approach to online evaluation, on the one hand, versus the option for appreciation within an interpretive approach, on the other hand, may account for interesting developments in the educational system of the near future that we seem to have stepped in quite abruptly due to the pandemic.