Empowering Teachers Digital Professional Practices: Findings from a Practice-Based Training Experience

Digital competence is increasingly recognised as essential for teachers to design effective and technology-enhanced learning environments. The study examines a teacher training course conducted by eCampus Telematic University (Italy, 2024/25 a.y.); it had 6,160 participants and aimed to develop digital skills according to the DigCompEdu framework. The course combined online lectures and practice-based workshops focused on the use of Canva and Padlet to foster hands-on instructional design skills. Participants’ digital artifacts were evaluated through a dual assessment approach, integrating traditional human-driven rubric-based evaluation with an exploratory AI-assisted assessment using Large Lan-guage Model (LLM). While engagement with course themes was high, the overall quality of submitted outputs was moderate, highlighting areas where participants’ competence in producing digital learning prototypes requires further development. These findings emphasise the importance of reflective and practice-based teachers’ professional development and provide practical insights for future training initiatives aimed at the integration of digital tools into teaching practices.