Abstract:

The increasing digitalization of education, as well as disruptions caused by unexpected crisis, amplified the need for teachers to develop their digital competence. In Portugal, an Action Plan for the Digital Transition was set up in 2020. It includes three main pillars of actions, the first one being Capacity building and digital inclusion. One of its sub-pillars corresponds to digital education, within which the development of teachers’ digital competence is a priority. Based on a national diagnosis on teachers’ needs [1], framed by DigCompEdu, we identified the Assessment competence area as the one in which teachers revealed lower proficiency levels.

Having identified this gap, we developed a MOOC focusing on the particular competences of the Assessment area:
i) assessment strategies,
ii) analysing evidence and
iii) feedback and planning.

This presentation will put forward preliminary results regarding teachers’ perceptions of the contribution of the MOOC for the development of DC regarding assessment practices and for their professional learning.

A total of 316 teachers concluded the MOOC and 284 (72% female) answered the final questionnaire. They were on average 46.12 years old. 27.8% classified the course as “good” and 72.2% as “very good”. 98.9% of the teachers would recommend the course to a colleague and 99.2% would do another course developed by the same team. The three top reasons identified by teachers for the conclusion of the course were: the expectation of the certificate recognition (70.5%), the usefulness and attractiveness of the content (69.1%) and the structure and organization of the course (48.8%).

Teachers’ perceptions of the contribution of the MOOC for the development of digital competence and for their professional learning were collected via a set of items and using a 5-point Likert scale (Totally disagree = 1 – Totally agree =5). The contribution of the MOOC for the development of digital competence was measured using 8 items (e.g. “The MOOC has helped me… to design assessments supported by digital technologies, …to develop effective feedback practices, …to diversify assessment strategies). The same number of items was used to measure the contribution of the MOOC for professional development (e.g. The MOOC has helped me… to achieve my professional development goals, …to adequate my professional practice to my working context, … to consider new goals and professional development paths).

Results show a mean score of 4.27 regarding the contribution of the MOOC for the development of DC and of 4.30 regarding professional learning, demonstrating the positive perception of teachers. Results will be discussed in relation to the current national panorama, particularly in what the formal recognition of MOOCs for the advancement of teachers’ career is concerned, which is not a reality yet.

Acknowledgments:
This work is financially supported by National Funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the project 2022.14365.BD, 2021.03379.CEECIND and UIDB/00194/2020.

References:
[1] Lucas, M., & Bem-haja. (2021). Relatório do estudo sobre o nível de competências digitais dos docentes do ensino básico e secundário dos Agrupamentos de Escolas e das Escolas Não Agrupadas da rede pública de Portugal Continental [Report of the study on the level of digital competences of primary and secondary school teachers in school groupings and non-grouped schools in the public network of mainland Portugal]. Ministério da Educação - Direção-Geral da Educação. https://tinyurl.com/mswmc7pe

Keywords:

Pedagogical digital competence, DigCompEdu, assessment practices.