Through the Screen: Reflections on Online Training Experience about Didactic and Assessment Use of Boardgames

The pandemic period faced us with the challenge of supporting teachers' professionalism through online tools, in order to expand their professional, pedagogical/didactic, and technological knowledge. The importance of using games in terms of learning is now consolidated and subject to an ongoing research work, which is highlighting its current role in teaching. It is therefore interesting to expand this theoretical framework through a more in-depth analysis of the use of boardgames in online mode. Therefore, research questions are as follows: a) how much are teachers aware of the impact on their teaching and professionalism by a course on the use of board games used in online mode? b) how can we consider a possible improvement of their assessment and self-assessment practices? The project ‘Il gioco fa scuola‘ is a training opportunity for the development of design skills, assessment and self-assessment through the use of board games in digital format. The 20-hours asynchronous course consisted of 12 modules. The contribution will present the results of a first survey carried out on project works, on the skill self-assessment tool and on questionnaires completed by 69 teachers of different school-levels, as well as the presentation of the project and its evaluation system. From the analysis of qualitative and quantitative results – made using the NVivo and R software, first results are: a) for what concerns the analysis of the learning process by means of the course in asynchronous mode, the teachers expressed a general appreciation for the modality; b) a substantial awareness of the improvement of each one's own professionalism emerges; c) the use of board games, both in presence mode and online, is perceived as an useful tool not only for improving students' learning, but also to assess the skills acquired; d) the proposed self-assessment process was found to be tiring in some places, but recognized as important for the process of improving each one's own professionalism; e) the receipt of feedback at the end of the course for the improvement of practices was particularly appreciated. Eventually, we will present a reflection about a new concept of ‘table game‘ and about using feedback methods activated online.