HOW TO TEACH AND ASSESS THE TEAMWORK COMPETENCY THROUGH E-LEARNING?

Abstract

The competency -based education meets the demands of today's working world, conditioned by constant technological changes and the primacy of the information and knowledge society, the challenge of forming increasingly competent professional education. This approach implies changes at university level, where it is not only necessary to modify the curriculum and curriculum design in general, but also to change the conception of the process by its actors. The competency- based assessment is one of the challenges they face most teachers and requires a shift from the traditional approach based on the accumulation of knowledge to a new one based on the competences development. The competency-based assessment not only aims to improve the comprehensive or practical learning, but also provide a smooth transition to employment and giving people the skills to meet the growing challenges of today's society. Within transversal competences defined in Tunnin Project, teamwork is one of the skills most valued by employers, businesses and graduates (National Agency for Assessment and Accreditation, RFLEX project 2008, Freire, Teijeiro and Pais 2012). Kozlowski & Bell (2003) assert the emergence of teams as basic building blocks of current organizational structures. Being consistent with these requirements from education seeks to form this competition and the mode of e -learning is no stranger to this purpose. This research aims to analyze the teaching - learning and competency assessment of the teamwork competency in the context of e -learning. We used a qualitative methods based on in depth on-line interviews. The participants were teachers and coordinators currently involved in teaching and assessment practices using e-learning. The participants are academics form 5 Catalonian universities. The investigation is still ongoing, but the expected results indicate that in the educational context of e -learning in universities can develop innovative practices that focus on teaching and learning from the perspective. The academics consider that teaching and learning the teamwork competency is a complicate task in the e-learning context. Most of them consider that the best way to achieve this competency is in a face to face environment. Moreover, there are some of the participants which agree that the team work competency could be easily teaching using tools as: wikis, webquest, social networks, among others. In relation to the assessment process, there are participants which consider that the teamwork competency is hard or even impossible to be evaluated through e-learning processes, and there are others considering that the use of rubrics, feedback processes are best ways to develop this competency.