It is essential for faculty members to re-conceptualise their professional profiles, functions and roles -- but also, to enhance their training and professional competences and skills to keep up with emerging technologies and digital transformation. Therefore, the DigitalHEIghts project set out to promote a sustainable pathway for transforming assessment in higher education through development of digital readiness, resilience and capacity, and support digital capabilities of the higher education sector; this was done by making use of the DigComp Edu framework for higher education, the Digital Action Plan, the HEInnovate self-assessment tool and the European Education Area policy making and strategies. The Digital HEIghts project aimed to support the digital upskilling of faculty members within the field of digital assessment, develop integrated learning material in the field of digital assessment to support faculty members/academics and researchers, and provide academics with opportunities to expand their network and practice mentoring through the use of an interactive map on the E-Learning platform.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, 95% of Higher Education Institutions were affected, having to shift towards an emergency remote teaching to respond to the restrictions and challenges posed by the pandemic. This situation had its toll on the way assessment took place in higher education, which was already affected by the proliferation of technologies in the past couple of decades. Furthermore, according to the DigCompEdu framework, any attempt to integrate digital technologies into teaching and learning should take into consideration how digital technologies can enhance existing assessment strategies. At the same time, according to the DigCompEdu authors, it is important to consider how digital technologies can be used to create or to facilitate innovative assessment approaches. According to the European Framework for the Digital Competences of Educators (2017), the digital teaching competence of academic staff is at a low level. The research completed for the OpenEdu Project and its related investigations (OpenCases, OpenCred, OpenSurvey and MOOC knowledge) shows that albeit digital training is a priority in Europe, numerous higher education institutions in Member States do not have a strategic plan for opening up their practices