Improving Future Teachers’ Digital Competence Using Active Methodologies

Carmen Romero-García,Olga Buzón-García,Patricia De Paz-Lugo

doi:10.3390/su12187798

Carmen Romero-García, Olga Buzón-García + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187798

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Abstract

Contemporary society demands a university education based on active and participatory educational models that enable the development of competences, with digital competence being amongst the most demanded ones. This work presents the results of an educational innovation at the university level. It intends to analyse whether the implementation of an active methodology supported by technological tools in a virtual classroom contributes to students’ digital development. A quantitative methodology with a pre-experimental pretest-posttest design was used. The sample comprised 30 students studying the Curriculum Design module on the Biology and Geology Specialism of the Master’s in Teacher Training at the Universidad Internacional de la Rioja. The results show an improvement in the five areas of the digital competence specified by the Common Framework for Teachers’ Digital Competence (MCCDD) established by Spain’s National Institute of Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF), with a large effect size. It is concluded that the educational experiment implemented has enabled an increment in the level of digital competence of future teachers.

Highlights

Nowadays, students have to learn to live in a globalised, digitised, intercultural, and changing society that produces vast quantities of information
In order to establish whether there was an increase in students’ level of digital competence, we analysed the results before the experience and after the experience, with the aim of establishing whether there were changes
The development of digital competence in the education system means that teachers are trained in it, something that involves making them capable of using information and communication technology (ICT) appropriately as a methodological resource integrated into the teaching and learning process [46]

Summary

Introduction

Students have to learn to live in a globalised, digitised, intercultural, and changing society that produces vast quantities of information. Students’ learning needs require ways of teaching that are different from those used 20 years ago [1,2]. We have been experiencing a transition from an education model centred on teaching and content transmission towards a methodological model focused on the acquirement of competencies. University education has traditionally been based on a lecturer-centred educational model that emphasises the transmission of knowledge and its reproduction by the students, the lecturer’s lesson, and individual work [3]. Digital competence is one of the eight key competencies that every person should have developed upon completion of compulsory education to be able to adapt quickly to a rapidly changing world with multiple interconnections [5] One of the strategic objectives of the European Commission in the field of education and training (“ET2020”) is to encourage innovation and creativity, promoting the acquisition of transversal competences, including digital competence, by all citizens [4].

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