A COVID-19 Teaching Experiment: Combining Competency-Based Assessment and Micro-Courses to Teach Technical and Non-Technical Skills

This innovative practice work-in-progress paper presents how a course has been designed to be fully taught remotely. The proposed design combines the two concepts of micro-course and competency-based assessments into a single and coherent pedagogical device. Micro-courses are used to structure the course and to help students better organise their learning. Competency-based assessments are used to propose a more personalised and individualised learning experience to students and to keep them motivated and involved. To be able to efficiently follow a remote course, students have to practice several non-technical skills such as communication, digital fluency, autonomy, time management, etc. This paper also shows how the proposed device indirectly teaches these skills, in addition to the technical skills concerned by the course. This particular fact fosters students to be involved with the course, which is way more difficult in a completely remote setting. The proposed course is being tested for the first time during this 2020–2021 academic year, with third-year bachelor students in electronics and telecommunications. A short survey has been conducted at the end of the year to get some results on students' perception of the pedagogical device. Results from the survey which collected qualitative and quantitative data from students show that they adhere to the course and find it suitable in a remote setting. Several elements to be improved for the next edition of the course have also been highlighted.