Abstract:

Currently educational institutions face the challenge of innovating teaching and learning practices using digital technologies. Moreover, at the European level it is widely recognized the need to train educators and students to develop their digital competence. The emerging challenges of today's society, arising from the pandemic situation, have further emphasized the need for teacher training in the use of digital technologies and mastery of tools for distance learning.
In this context, the Higher School of Education of Lisbon (Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa), in association with the Distance Learning Group of the Lisbon University Polytechnic (EaD@IPL), created an e-learning post-graduate program in Digital Education, which delivers synchronous and asynchronous sessions mediated by Moodle and Zoom platforms.

The post-graduate program in Digital Education aims to promote innovative pedagogical practices in digital environments, contributing to the consolidation of an emerging community of practice in the field of Digital Education. Specifically, students are expected to (1) develop digital competencies that allow them to mobilize the potential of digital technologies for teaching and learning; (2) make decisions regarding the selection of resources and multimedia authoring tools based on pedagogical options and learning objectives; and (3) design, develop, implement, and evaluate projects in the field of digital education. This course has 60 ECTS, distributed over two semesters. The study plan offers 9 curricular units (5 curricular units in 1st semester and 4 in the 2nd semester). It is primarily intended for higher education teachers, primary and secondary teachers, graduates of courses that qualify for teaching, and trainers in general.

To evaluate the course, an anonymous pedagogical survey was conducted among the students to measure their perception of the quality of curricular units offered in the 1st semester. This article presents and discusses the results of this survey, which had a response rate of 68%. The survey consists of 9 closed-response items and 3 open-response items.The open-response items involved the identification of strengths, weaknesses, and suggestions.

The closed-response items used a Likert scale from 1 to 5, where 1 corresponds to "very inappropriate" and 5 to "very appropriate." The curricular units of the 1st semester received a satisfactory overall evaluation (average: 4.08). The highest value (4.36) refers to the item "Contribution of the curricular unit to the acquisition of competencies in the course," and the lowest value (3.77) to the item "Calculation of the estimated time required to complete the proposed asynchronous activities."

This study provides relevant insights to
(i) reflect upon the quality of the course, identifying strategic lines of improvement;
(ii) create a reference assessment model for other distance learning courses at the Lisbon University Polytechnic, and
(iii) sharing and enriching the literature in the field of Digital Education.

Keywords:

Assessment, e-learning, higher education, digital education, student perceptions.