english language teaching professors’ challenges and innovations in teaching and assessment at iranian universities during covid-19

Due to the restrictions of covid-19, universities adopted various strategies to alleviate the negative impacts of the pandemic on teaching and assessment. being at the forefront of efforts to maintain the continuity of education, university professors faced challenges and came up with innovations in their teaching and assessment. this study investigated english language teaching professors' innovations and challenges in teaching and assessment at five universities in guilan province. to collect data, a researcher-developed questionnaire was distributed among 33 male and female professors and semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine of them. the results showed that problems with the students’ unethical conduct (cheating) on exams, access to electronic educational materials, the online course/lesson plan, use of body language in online classes, the equipment for assessment and testing, computer and social media literacy, the internet connection, and the university lms for teaching writing and speaking skills were among the challenges. among the innovative measures the professors employed were the use of social media and web conferencing systems, self-study links, voice-embedded powerpoint files, realia in video conferencing sessions, brief online interviews, web-based assessment in the form of video conferencing, and open-ended or essay-type questions for assessment purposes. the study concludes that the iranian english language teaching professors encountered several self-oriented, student-oriented, university-oriented, and society-oriented challenges during the pandemic; they, however, could devise innovative teaching and testing techniques to help the continuity of education during the restrictions and closures on education. the study has implications for ensuring the continuity of quality english language teaching at universities in pandemics.