The influence of using ICT in high-skills competences and ICT competences. A structural model

Abstract

University students have to master new competences to be able to completely form part of Knowledge Society, which are known as 21st-century competences. These include high-skill competences (higher-order thinking capacities and teamwork competences) and information and communication technologies (ICT) competences (technological, pedagogical and ethical). Moreover, using technological resources is vital for student learning. This study aims to determine the influence of ICT use (personal use, academic use at home and academic use in the classroom) on the relational asymmetric structure of ICT competences on high-skill competences. For this purpose, an explanatory, cross-sectional and correlational design has been made that collected information through a questionnaire from a sample that comprised 983 students from the University of Valencia (Spain), selected by incidental non-probability sampling. The data analysis was a structural equation model that asymmetrically related three sets: ICT use, ICT competences and high-skill competences. The results indicated that ICT competences, mostly the pedagogical competences, impacted on high-skill competences: higher-order thinking capacities and teamwork competences. Academic use at home directly influenced the three ICT competences subsets and teamwork competences. This work stresses the negative relation of academic ICT use in the classroom with ICT competences, higher-order thinking capacities and teamwork competences. This research makes it possible to delimit the complex influence of ICT use on twenty-first-century competences, being necessary to promote the academic ICT use at home and rethink the academic ICT use in the classroom. This implies that university institutions should consider training plans that include the ICT integration into classrooms.