Practical skills evaluation with digital technologies in teacher education

In Spring 2020, almost all the universities across the word shifted from a face to face interaction with their students to online activity due to the outbreak of COVID19. Most of the study programmes had to move from a substantial standard of assessing student learning on campus, in person, to methodologies that could be undertaken remotely due to the Coronavirus shutdown. Universities immersed in a fast race of implementing new ways of assessing students remotely, trying to maintain the quality of the continuous assessment and to overcome any technological barrier which could place students in a disadvantaged position due to their access to digital resources. The changes were often radical, innovative and creative, and there has been a huge increase of feeling that in going back to the “normal conditions”, the universities will not be the same as before the Covid crisis, but enriched with the new achievements and steps forward the digitalization made during the pandemic.
The university digitalization is here to stay, but are universities prepared to embrace the change? Are they prepared for a shift of paradigm of their academic culture? And teachers? Do they have the proper competencies to adapt for a long-term change? Are they prepared for a digital teaching revolution? And finally, is a digital revolution possible without a pedagogical one?
Recent studies demonstrate that teachers faced a series of challenges in this shift of teaching mode:
- Difficulties to assess students´ practical skills, as those acquired in school placement, internships in schools, practical activities in regular classes, soft skills which involve strong and continuous interactions;
- Challenges to adapt paper and pencil assessment to digital assessment
- Weak digital competences of teachers
To overcome these challenges, it is evident that action is needed to train HE teachers in new forms of technology to be able to assess new forms of learning and to be prepare for online competences assessment for on-site activities (internships, skills, labs...)