Transforming the Culture and Innovating the Practices of Digital Assessment: How MOOCs Can Scale Up the Impact

Abstract

The emerging new learning scenarios made possible by the rapid dissemination of adaptive digital technologies are deeply changing higher education processes. They provide educators and learners with new opportunities for transforming their educational practices. encouraging learning innovation and challenging traditional teaching methods. This transformation is particularly significant in how learning achievement is measured, assessed, and certified. The use of learning analytics and adaptive digital technologies not only contribute to consolidate an assessment for learning approach as call for it. In the face of this challenge, educators must speedily adapt their practices to ensure that they are effectively using digital tools to support this new assessment culture. In the framework of the Erasmus+ project PROF-XXI, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled "The 21st Century Teacher: Learning to Teach with Digital Technologies" was designed and delivered to facilitate teachers’ access to good practices in this field. The MOOC included four modules covering various aspects of digital education and was designed taking as a reference the competences defined in the DigCompEdu framework. It was delivered on an Open edX instance. A total of 5,660 participants, mainly from Latin America, took this course in two cohorts, with 681 participants completing it. In this paper we describe the experience of designing a learning module specifically dedicated to digital assessment innovation for this MOOC, The aim was to inspire educational change and promote a more sustainable approach to assessment for learning based on the PrACT framework. The main results of this experience are presented and discussed, as well as lessons learnt.