  The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a strong effect on higher education
institutions with the closure of classroom teaching activities. In this
unprecedented crisis, of global proportion, educators and families had to deal
with unpredictability and learn new ways of teaching. This short essay aims to
explore the challenges posed to Portuguese higher education institutions and to
analyze the challenges posed to evaluation models. To this end, the relevance
of formative and summative assessment models in distance education is explored
and the perception of teachers and students about the practices adopted in
remote assessment is discussed. On the teachers' side, there is a high concern
about adopting fraud-free models, and an excessive focus on the summative
assessment component that in the distance learning model has less preponderance
when compared to the gradual monitoring and assessment processes of the
students, while on the students' side, problems arise regarding equipment to
follow the teaching sessions and concerns about their privacy, particularly
when intrusive IT solutions request the access to their cameras, audio, and
desktop.
