Evaluating Continuous Assessment Quality in Competence-Based Education Online: The Case of the E-Folio

Universidade Aberta (UAb), being a distance teaching university, is particularly suited to tackle some of the recommendations concerning the assurance of accessibility to education expressed in the "Education and Training 2010" goals. Meanwhile, the University's strategic plan for 2006/2010 decided to implement a fully virtual innovative teaching and learning methodology. The pedagogical model adopted by the University is "strongly dominated by the valuing of students' social and communal integration, personalized monitoring of their learning and the respect for the particular life experience of each student". This pedagogical model, in use since 2007, is based on four cornerstones: (1) student-centered learning; (2) flexibility; (3) interaction; and (4) digital inclusion, aligned with the key competences required for learners in this knowledge-based society. The dramatic changes that are taking place at the University call for close monitoring of its implementation and for applied research on online methodologies, which call for new open and distant learning assessment strategies. For this reason, a new research unit was created at the University: the Distance Education Laboratory (LEaD--Laboratorio de Educacao a Distancia). The current research, being part of a larger project, is focused on assessment issues concerning undergraduate education. The pedagogical model calls for two main types of instruments to be used in undergraduate fully online courses: (1) e-folios; and (2) p-folios. The current project intends to research and develop the pedagogical model for undergraduate courses at Universidade Aberta, and to identify strategies that promote the students' learning and success. In particular, the authors are concerned with the development of instruments and approaches to continuous assessment, targeted at the promotion of specific competences. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)