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Good quality complex skills training in higher education results in each students’ ability to apply what they have learned in various situations, also called transfer. Transfer requires regular, timely, structured, constructive, and high-quality feedback and guidance during practice in various practice-relevant, but safe, situations (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Shute, 2008; Van der Kleij et al., 2015; Van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2017). Formative assessment of practice during the acquisition of skills, with feed-up (supporting students’ construction of a clear mental model of the targeted skills mastery level), feedback (information on students’ practice and performance of the skill mirrored against the targeted mastery level), and feed-forward (reflection on received feedback and setting new goals for future practice) is important (Sluijsmans et al., 2013). However, current circumstances in higher education offer only limited possibilities for supervised practice and teachers’ feedback, while personalized feedback and guidance is both complex and time-consuming, considering the large number of students to be educated. Educational scalability of skills training with simultaneous maintenance of educational quality is problematic (Kasch et al, 2017). This problem especially applies to face-to-face education, but also to online, or distance, education. Moreover, existing higher education for skills mastery is probably still suboptimal and apparently a persistent problem (Peddle, 2000), as employers mentioning competence deficits or skill gaps of graduates are not uncommon internationally (Prikshat et al., 2020).
This paper describes the result of the Pe(e)rfectly Skilled design-based research project, in which the question was addressed of how students’ skills acquisition processes and teachers’ guidance in higher education could be simultaneously improved and become more scalable. It was partly grounded in recent research in secondary education, which showed that students’ skill acquisition such as presenting orally, collaborating, and information literacy could be improved if a technology-enhanced formative assessment method with peer feedback and video-enhanced rubrics was used in a blended classroom setting (Ackermans et al., 2021a, 2021b; Rusman et al., 2019). In this method, called Viewbrics, both students and teachers received highly structured and technology-enhanced process support to formatively assess students’ skills mastery levels and mirror performances during practice against video-enhanced rubrics (Rusman, et al., 2018). The method was used in practice-based project education, in a hands-on and blended (both face to face and online) setting. Technology-enhanced process support was given by means of an interactive formative assessment cycle, with various design elements such as video-enhanced rubrics and visualizations of feedback in a skills’ wheel, each with specific underlying design intentions to support initial mental model formation, practice, giving and receiving (self-peer- and expert) feedback, reflection, self-regulation, and goal-setting (Rusman et al, accepted).
The current project in higher education, Pe(e)rfectly Skilled, was partly grounded on the design of, and findings from, the Viewbrics technology-enhanced formative assessment method for skills acquisition. The current project addressed the following question: What are the theory-and practice based design characteristics of a method that contributes to increased flexible, effective, efficient, and attractive skill acquisition in higher distance education?
The design intentions and pursued outcomes of the method were, in the context of this project, defined as follows: