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. In the case of 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. This study aims at reveiling the preference of students and professors at the University of Bucharest, College of Journalism and Communication Studies for either a normative or an interpretive approach to student performance evaluation throughout an online educational process within a curriculum that emphasises creativity as a main skill necessary to future journalists, public relations and advertising industry practitioners. Methodologically, the survey addressed to the students and to the professors, and a semi-structured interview targetting professors, have shown that the majority of those directly involved in the educational process in the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Studies showed preference for an interpretive paradigm to online evaluation. The main reasons for such preference had to do with ethics and proctoring, on the one hand, and with the need for assessing creativity which can be better approached interpretively, rather than normatively. These results have proved that the best evaluation strategy is the one that is ideally tailored to all of the characteristics of the educational context.