Alternative Assessment and Technology Enhanced Assessment practices: Research to inform Faculty Development processes

Assessment practices in the Italian universities keep following a traditional approach, based on teaching methodologies connected to knowledge transmission and summative assessment of students’ competences (Coggi, 2022), in contrast with the Bologna Process, which encourages the use of different assessment approaches capable of engaging students and providing them with lifelong learning opportunities which are useful for their professional future (European Commission et al., 2018). Thus, there is a clear urgency to enhance academics’ competences to introduce innovations both in teaching as well as in assessment practices (Grion et al., 2021). Starting from this assumption, the research aimed to investigate the assessment practices most frequently used by Italian university lecturers through the analysis of a representative sample of Syllabi. The results showed the prevalence of traditional assessment practices, rather than alternatives or enhanced by the use of technology. The concluding remarks aim to understand how to support the training of university lecturers in new, alternative and technology-enhanced assessment approaches and how to provide related implementation support.