In the information and knowledge society, where technology develops rapidly and penetrates deeply into our lives, the discussion about digital competence has become a hot topic today. After the emergence of the Coronavirus (Covid-19) and with its huge impact on the education industry, the concern about digital competence has reached a new height. This systematic literature review uses Web of science and Scopus as databases to store and analyze the existing research on digital competence in higher education settings. The purpose of this review is to provide the scholar community with a current overview of digital competence research from 2015 to 2021 in the context of higher education regarding the definition of digital competence, dimensions used to evaluate digital competence, research purposes, methodologies, and results and limitations. Major findings include that the majority of publications cited both research and EU policy in describing the definition of digital competence. The review indicates that most university students and teachers have a basic level of digital competence. Besides, the institutions of higher education are encouraged to focus on the development students and teachers’ digital competence, create relevant learning strategies and use appropriate tools to improve the quality of education.

Digital competence in higher education research: A systematic literature review

New challenges in higher education: A study of the digital competence of educators in Covid times

We are experiencing a serious health crisis due to COVID‐19 that has a major impact on the field of education. The educational system therefore needs to be updated and innovated, with the addition of digital resources, to adapt the teaching and learning processes to students with disabilities. To meet the goal of high‐quality education, teachers must have adequate digital competence to face the educational demands that are placed on them. Therefore, the purposes of this study are: to know the teachers' knowledge about digital resources to support students with disabilities (O1);at each educational stage (O2), identify the variables that have a significant impact on the acquisition of teacher competence (O3);propose a selection of useful ICT resources for each type of disability (O4). An ex post facto design was used with 1194 teachers from Andalusia (Spain). The results showed the medium‐low level of the teaching staff, especially in the higher education stage. In addition, gender, motivation, attitude and having students with special needs are determining factors in the development of teacher knowledge. The results highlight the urgent need for teachers to be trained in digital resources. We hope that the range of resources proposed in this study will help teachers enhance their teaching practice. Practitioner notes What we already know about this topic Teachers have to find and adapt educational technology to achieve a higher level of success in students with disabilities. The use of ICT resources by teachers acts as a bridge to promote learning in students with disabilities. What this paper adds Identification of those predictors that significantly influence the acquisition of digital competence in teaching staff at various stages of education: gender, educational stage, motivation, attitude towards technologies and having students with specific educational support needs. A proposal of didactic applications is provided to address the different types of functional diversity. Implications for practice and/or policy It is essential that training plans on digital competence are established to assist students with functional diversity in their different learning stages. In this sense, personalised training itineraries or TMOOCs can be of major assistance. Expansion of the study sample (macro level) to identify digital factors, which affect the acquisition of the digital competence of the teaching staff to support their students' disabilities. Change regarding the type of diagnosis through self‐perception tests, such as those presented by these models, and subsequent work in other fields such as e‐portfolios of evidence or instruments in the form of problem solving. What we already know about this topic Teachers have to find and adapt educational technology to achieve a higher level of success in students with disabilities. The use of ICT resources by teachers acts as a bridge to promote learning in students with disabilities. What this paper adds Identification of those predictors that significantly influence the acquisition of digital competence in teaching staff at various stages of education: gender, educational stage, motivation, attitude towards technologies and having students with specific educational support needs. A proposal of didactic applications is provided to address the different types of functional diversity. Implications for practice and/or policy It is essential that training plans on digital competence are established to assist students with functional diversity in their different learning stages. In this sense, personalised training itineraries or TMOOCs can be of major assistance. Expansion of the study sample (macro level) to identify digital factors, which affect the acquisition of the digital competence of the teaching staff to support their students' disabilities. Change regarding the type of diagnosis through self‐perception tests, such as those presented by these models, and subsequent work in other fields such as e‐portfolios of evidence or instruments in the for of problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of British Journal of Educational Technology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Teachers' digital competence to assist students with functional diversity: Identification of factors through logistic regression methods

In this paper, quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the impact that the process of digitalization of academic activities in higher education has had on the habits of use of information and communication technologies (ICT) among professors and the influence of the area of knowledge on this impact. For this purpose, responses from 716 professors from different Latin American universities to a survey designed by the authors were statistically analyzed. Following the UNESCO guide on the use of ICT in higher education, the survey distinguishes the following teaching activities to measure the use of ICT: lessons, tutorials, sharing materials, and evaluation. The results show that the use of ICT has increased in all teaching activities, but unevenly, being particularly intense in those in which the use of ICT was less frequent during the pandemic—specifically, tutorials and evaluation, whose frequency of use has increased by around 50%. As a result of this uneven increase, the use of ICTs in different teaching activities has become more homogeneous after the pandemic. This increase was significantly higher among engineering and social sciences professors than in other areas of knowledge, as well as in evaluation and tutorial tools than in other activities. In addition, the ICT tools most used during the pandemic were those with which the professors or students were most familiar before the pandemic. It is recommended that universities increase the specific training of professors in the pedagogical use of ICT and that they should address the specificities of each area of knowledge.

/pdf/influence-of-knowledge-area-on-the-use-of-digital-tools-16aj37c7.pdf

Influence of Knowledge Area on the Use of Digital Tools during the COVID-19 Pandemic among Latin American Professors

COVID-19 forced higher education institutions to reinvent themselves. The (usually) face-to-face education has swapped to distance contingency education. This change brought about numerous challenges that impose adjustments in several dimensions, such as pedagogical strategies and the dependence on teaching platforms and computer systems-and, above all, the new relationship between the various actors (students, teachers, and management staff). All the sudden changes, combined with uncertainty concerning what was happening, created several strategies and options. This paper has the main purpose of analyzing the scientific production on higher education of EU27 academic institutions during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic in journals indexed in Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science and Elsevier's Scopus. The sample is composed of 22 articles in total. The results show that the articles were published in 19 journals; their main focuses are Higher Education, COVID-19, and distance learning. In our database, we find several types of concerns, which shows that HEIs have a wide range of dimensions. We intend this article to be an instrument, not only to identify what was done in 2020, but to point out clues for the future.

http://repositorio.uportu.pt:8080/bitstream/11328/3534/1/Ijerp.pdf

EU27 Higher Education Institutions and COVID-19, Year 2020.

We are currently witnessing a moment in history in which sustainable education practices are being principally modified by the proliferation of technologies and their wider use in every level of society, which makes necessary their integration into education contexts. This is found in the crosshairs of different institutions, which propose a series of competency frameworks, such as DigCompEdu. This framework provides suggestions for the competences that educators should be trained on under pedagogic-didactic criteria. The present work intends to measure the reliability and validity of the questionnaire DigCompEdu Check-In with the participation of 2262 professors from different public Andalusian universities. The known-groups method was utilized to elucidate if the tool is able or not to discriminate different variables of interest between known groups. The study reveals that the instrument has high indices of reliability, globally, and in the different dimensions that comprise it. Furthermore, it verifies that the instrument is sufficiently robust to discriminate the subjects who are clearly differentiated by variables related with technology. Along this line, the recommendation is given to continue working on the creation of new instruments focused on the mastery of this competency.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/15/6094/pdf

Development of the Teacher Digital Competence Validation of DigCompEdu Check-In Questionnaire in the University Context of Andalusia (Spain)

The impact and benefit that information and communication technologies (ICT) have in the educational field require new teaching skills. This fact has been increased by the recent crisis caused by COVID-19. This study tries to investigate the level of digital teaching competence (DTC) of Higher Education teachers of Health Sciences, and its relationship with several variables. For this, it has the participation of 300 teachers from the 9 universities of Andalusia (Spain). The research is structured through a descriptive (RQ1) and inferential (RQ2) design. The answers given to the DigCompEdu Check-In questionnaire adapted to the Spanish context are analyzed. The results, which show high levels of reliability of the questionnaire (Cronbach and McDonald) and validity (CFA), indicate that the level of competence is basic-intermediate. In addition, the area in which teachers excel is digital resources. For this reason, it is proposed to structure personalized training plans and continue expanding the characteristics of this study at an international level.

Juan-Jesús Gutiérrez-Castillo

Papers

Development of the Teacher Digital Competence Validation of DigCompEdu Check-In Questionnaire in the University Context of Andalusia (Spain)

The Teaching Digital Competence of Health Sciences Teachers. A Study at Andalusian Universities (Spain).