Digital competence of higher education applicants: new opportunities and challenges for future education

Abstract

As a result of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of distance learning, the issue of digital competence, which both modern educators and students should possess, has become especially relevant. Digital competence is important in the education system, because having it, students can adequately respond to modern global challenges and transformations. The study aims to analyze the state of digital competence of higher education applicants through the prism of modern challenges and opportunities. The work is based on the use of general theoretical and empirical research methods. Analysis, synthesis, abstraction, and concretization were important among theoretical methods. Based on the predictive method of research the main ways of digital competence formation and specifics of future use were characterized. At the same time, to determine the level of digital competence, a questionnaire and survey of students based on digital literacy diagnostic techniques were conducted. The results considered the problem of theoretical justification of the digital competence phenomenon, offered their own understanding of this term, determined the structure of formation of basic competencies in higher education applicants, based on the use of modern techniques, characterized the state of digital literacy of students. The results also indicate that mostly the respondents of the experiment had an average level of digital competence. Despite this, many respondents were not fully acquainted with the manipulative possibilities of information resources. The practical value of the work lies in the development of practical recommendations that can be applied in further work to improve the level of mastery of digital competence.