Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills

The "Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills" (ATC21STM) is a project between Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Singapore, the Netherlands, Finland, USA, Costa Rica and, in Australia, the University of Melbourne (Care, 2014). The ATC21S website says they are "... developing methods to assess skills that will form the basis for 21st-century curricula". That sounded interesting, but I could not find details of how this was being done.

In terms of assessing skills, I found the approach used for Australian Computer Society's postgraduate students most useful. With this you get the student to do whatever it is you are assessing, preferably in their workplace. This is much the same as the approach which I was trained in for assessment in the VET sector. I have applied this approach with masters students and it would seem applicable to fixing a light switch or developing a corporate strategy.

As an example, the assessment for my ICT Sustainability course, includes: "Write a report on the carbon footprint and materials use of the ICT operations of your organisation (or an organisation you are familiar with)".

Reference

Care, E., (21 January 2014), Assessing 21st century skills. Perspective Paper for the Centre for Education Research and Practice. Retrieved from https://cerp.aqa.org.uk/perspectives/assessing-21st-century-skills