The spread of Covid-19 pandemic upturned higher education routines, inducing a shift to online learning which sometimes translated into a huge leap towards didactic experimentation. While exposing critical issues in existing teaching methodologies and assessment processes, such emergency distance education condition could spark meaningful educational innovation. This paper describes an international study engaging teachers of professionalizing courses in the educational area across the world (N=120). The aim was to investigate their perception of the induced distance education in terms of teaching methodology and assessment practices. Emerging findings indicate a silver lining in the midst of the pandemic storm, as teaching practices gear more towards being student-centred.

Teachers' professional expertise cannot ignore anymore a technological component to it. Technology is nowadays accessible more and more widely, but it does not automatically translate into learning improvement. It is crucial to understand how educators give meaning to technology integration in their practices, i.e. investigate teachers' professional reasoning. The paper reports on part of a wider study on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) institutions' capability to engage student-teachers' reasoning. Within the broader multiple case study across Europe, the paper reports on data emerging from document analysis and focused interviews with pre-service teachers (N tot 36). The findings suggest an activation of reasoning whose roots might find place outside ITE influence, encouraging further research.

This article reports on a trace‐based assessment of approaches to learning used by middle school aged children who interacted with NASA Mars Mission science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) games in Whyville , an online game environment with 8 million registered young learners. The learning objectives of two games included awareness and knowledge of NASA missions, developing knowledge and skills of measurement and scaling, applying measurement for planetary comparisons in the solar system. Trace data from 1361 interactions were analysed with nonparametric multidimensional scaling methods, which permitted visual examination and statistical validation, and provided an example and proof of concept for the multidimensional scaling approach to analysis of time‐based behavioural data from a game or simulation. Differences in approach to learning were found illustrating the potential value of the methodology to curriculum and game‐based learning designers as well as other creators of online STEM content for pre‐college youth. The theoretical framework of the method and analysis makes use of the Epistemic Network Analysis toolkit as a post hoc data exploration platform, and the discussion centres on issues of semantic interpretation of interaction end‐states and the application of evidence centred design in post hoc analysis. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Educational game play has been demonstrated to positively affect learning performance and learning persistence. Trace‐based assessment from digital learning environments can focus on learning outcomes and processes drawn from user behaviour and contextual data. Existing approaches used in learning analytics do not (fully) meet criteria commonly used in psychometrics or for different forms of validity in assessment, even though some consider learning analytics a form of assessment in the broadest sense. Frameworks of knowledge representation in trace‐based research often include concepts from cognitive psychology, education and cognitive science. What this paper adds To assess skills‐in‐action, stronger connections of learning analytics with educational measurement can include parametric and nonparametric statistics integrated with theory‐driven modelling and semantic network analysis approaches widening the basis for inferences, validity, meaning and understanding from digital traces. An expanded methodological foundation is offered for analysis in which nonparametric multidimensional scaling, multimodal analysis, epistemic network analysis and evidence‐centred design are combined. Implications for practice and policy The new foundations are suggested as a principled, theory‐driven, embedded data collection and analysis framework that provides structure fo...

The paper describes the international research conducted in collaboration between the University of Padova, University of North Texas, and Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. The study explores how higher education faculty involved in professionalizing courses for the educational area perceive the pandemic-induced transition to digitalized education (DE), after one year of experience with it. This paper introduces the second phase of a research study that began as early as spring 2020, with an online survey distributed worldwide. It seeks to investigate possible changes after one year of digitalized education related to (1) perceptions of institutional support and professional training offered; (2) potential and challenges of DE; and (3) professional intentions for future uses of DE. Details on the instrument’s reliability and structure will also be provided. We are exploring how the DE is changing teachers’ routines and whether these changes are paving the way for collaborative, reflective, and student-centred approaches that could have long-term consequences. This is to help focus future training pathways to better support teachers in teaching effectively and efficiently for learning, both in times of crisis and in times of normalcy.

In the rush for the Covid-19 pandemic's online transition, the pursuit of quality online learning was frequently overshadowed by the urgency of emergency instruction online. As blended and online teaching became an integral part of education, there emerged a need to investigate how faculty coped with this transition and what competencies they might be acquiring. In this paper, we report on international research about higher education faculty’s elicited dispositions and needs while they engaged with online teaching (OT), as these shape aspects of teacher competencies for integrating technology. This study aims to identify factors that shaped faculty competencies as pandemic restrictions forced transitions to OT. Snapshot surveys were conducted at two different phases of the pandemic, i.e. during the acceleration phase and the stasis one, approximately twelve months later. The surveys inquired about internal (e.g. enthusiasm and resolutions) and external (e.g. support) factors of faculty’s OT perceptions during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic, enabling monitoring of the phenomenon beyond the assessment of the first response to the emergency. Results revealed different patterns of dispositions and diverse uses of technological affordances to foster online learning. These patterns were also found to differ over time, highlighting conditions possibly enabling or hindering the development of competencies for OT during different phases of the pandemic. One important finding is that there was a change from internal confidence to institutional support being a strong predictor of intentions to continue OT, over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic.