Anna Serbati

EDITORIAL. TECHNOLOGY AS A SUPPORT TO TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT PRACTICES

Assessment in education is under pressure to change. Some drivers for change result from new ways of thinking about assessment and its educational purposes. Other drivers are external and are the result of wider changes in society. Technology falls into this second category. This special issue is concerned with change at the intersection of assessment and technology in education.

Teaching competences in Italian universities: an attempt of classification to inform professional development processes

How we can improve the quality of teaching in the university degree courses? What are the professors’practices and the beliefs about their role in the students’ learning process? A group of spokespersons of seven Italian Universities has carried out an integrate sources study to answer those questions and to define a programme of activities for developing didactic skills of the teachers. This paper aims to illustrate the design and the results of a research project which involved 4,289 university professors (59% of the target population), who were teaching courses at bachelor and master level during the academic year 2014/15. The data were directly gathered by a CAWI questionnaire which was distributed to the whole teaching staff; the survey results were linked to administrative data related to the educational offer and students’ evaluation of teaching in the same academic year. The results were summarized using some indicators, which showed the diffusion of good practices of teaching, support needs, beliefs, interest and availability of the respondents. We verified the reliability of these indicators and, by means of them, we identified sub-groups of areas of expertise and needs to involve teachers in appropriate different and integrated activities, directed to develop teachers’ professional competences.

La valorizzazione delle competenze trasversali. Il Boot camp for the job: un’esperienza realizzata dalla Regione del Veneto

The paper analyses the scientific literature, the main national and international classification of the soft skills and the importance of their awareness. It presents an experience carried out by the Region of Veneto in partnership with Italia Lavoro, now called Anpal Servizi, concerning an innovative methodology of development of the soft skills. It consists in physical and narrative exercises during which young people show their skills to those organizations interested in identifying talented youth to hire. The paper presents the objectives, the methodology and some results reached by the experience Boot camp for the job 2016, emphasizing the fact that it has been recognised as a European good practice in terms of efficiency, innovation, transferability and reproducibility.

Developing teaching and learning methods to innovate the Italian context of Higher Education. The case of University of Padua

This article looks at theories and practices related to faculty development and innovation in teaching and learning methods in Higher Education, in order to respond to the European 2020 Strategy, in which the High level group on the modernisation of higher education has been established, whose aim focuses on improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe’s higher education institutions (2013). The paper is framed within the context of the project PRODID (Preparazione alla professionalita docente e innovazione didattica), funded by the University of Padova, Italy with the major goal of creating a permanent and effective academic center for research on learning and teaching and faculty development. The theoretical framework of PRODID is informed by constructivism and social constructivism, and the student centered approach, encouraging student-teacher partnerships as a dimension for faculty development and teaching and learning innovations. The University of Helsinki and Michigan State University are mentioned as relevant examples of organizational settings integrated in higher education institutions that offer a great variety of practices consistent with the chosen theoretical framework. They also offer the Italian program of University of Padova models for critical reflection in how their teaching strategies can be created and developed on the basis of this international experience. The final discussion aims to highlight the strategies adopted during the first year of the project, characterized by the Italian culture and revealing new insights and ideas to create an Italian model of teaching and learning center.

Estroversione, riflessione e apprendimento: eventi d’apprendimento ed emozioni prevalenti nel processo di apprendimento in ambiente virtuale

The article presents an experience of simulation-based training developed in 2014 with students enrolled in the master programme in Management of Educational Services at the University of Padova. The training programme, devoted to the development of competences in the field of human resources management, has been integrated with vLeader, an online simulator designed for the improvement of leadership competences. As part of the evaluation of the programme’s effectiveness, a test for measuring personality traits according to the Big Five model and a learning journal to support reflection on simulation have been proposed to the students. Data collected with the two tools were crossed through an automated textual analysis of the learning journal contents in order to explore connections between reflections prompted by learning journals and personality traits of students involved.

Portfolios for adult learners. The Value of Reflection in Higher education. A Case Study Conducted at the University of Padua

This paper presents a study carried out at the University of Padova with the aim to promote an active process of recognition of competences that adults enrolled in university degrees have already acquired within non formal and informal contexts. During the research 44 working students completed a learning outcomes portfolio in order to make their competences gained within past experiences explicit and comparable with the expected learning outcomes and therefore to tailor their educational careers. The study, through a mix-method approach, investigated the educational and guidance dimensions of the portfolio construction within a guided process for the development of competences awareness obtained by the reflection during and after the action. Results from interviews to adult students, teachers evaluators and tutor/advisers, showed that the autobiographic reflective process has the transformative power to bring out moments or past aspects and create new connections between these aspects, generating new coherences and perspectives for the future professional and personal life