The project AHEAD aimed at enhancing digital assessment in the field of health care education across four European countries, namely Ireland, Germany, Poland and Georgia. It was mainly related to area 3 and 4 of the Framework for Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu): (i) teaching and learning and (ii) assessment. The AHEAD project focus on mainly two sub-elements of assessment (Redecker, 2017): (1) assessment strategies, and (2) feedback and planning and it addressed three target groups: school-based teachers, practice-based teachers and learners in health care education. The objectives of the AHEAD project were as follows: *Engaging participants and encourage them to become involved in the transformation towards digital healthcare assessment *Fostering digital assessment that is in-line with ongoing Higher and VET education and EU Digital Education agendas *Addressing knowledge and skills gaps, hopes and concerns of teachers and learners, and develop their capabilities in the area of digital assessment *Developing video-based self-assessment and peer assessment by means of innovative technologies (AI) and software, *Rewarding learning by means of open source digital badges / micro-credentialing.
Innovation approaches such as digital assessment are expected to drive the modernisation of education systems in a rapidly increasingly digital world (Kapsalis et al. 2019), and as a result of the past Covid-19 pandemic. Digital assessments can be used in different ways, e.g. for monitoring of learner`s progress, facilitating feedback to learners and supporting teachers to evaluate their teaching strategies. In this context, we applied for this funding to develop innovative ways to close the gap between required and available digital assessments. The assessment of skills such as handwashing was identified as universal in healthcare and across project partner disciplines i.e. nursing, medicine, surgical assistants. Skills assessment, which at the beginning of the project was predominantly paper-based in a face-to-face classroom-type fashion, proved ineffective in many ways. For one, it is resource intensive. Up to several hundred learners need to be assessed every year. In the lead organination (DCU), the assessment of handwashing takes weeks to complete and approx.10-15 teachers to perform the assessment. Creating digital assessments assists in decreasing human resources whilst increasing accuracy and self-directed learning.