Equity in performance assessment
While online education has been an option for some programs and courses before, during the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdown of entire institutions, the pandemic has forced many institutions to offer online education without proper planning. This shift was not easy and presented challenges to both the instructors and the students. While the academic activities could continue, many universities recognised the stressful transitions and sub-optimal situation for everyone involved. Consequently, some universities such as University of Manitoba have relaxed grading for the ongoing courses allowing late withdrawal without penalty. Additionally the following explanation was added to the transcripts: “Due to the possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic performance, students in Winter 2020 were given the option to retain their original grade, exclude their grade from GPA calculations (grades marked with an *), convert their letter grade to Pass (P*) or Voluntarily Withdraw (VW) from the course”. Similar measure was also taken by the USA National Board of Medical Examiners shifting from numeric score to pass/fail grade for students taking the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 (Whelan, 2020). The impact on ongoing research of graduate students and professors is more considerable as most non-COVID-19-related research activities were halted as a direct consequences of the lockdowns (Nassisi et al., 2020). While researchers are encouraged to engage in other activities such as writing review papers and/or planning future experiments, it is critically important that their performance assessment considers these exceptional circumstances.