The development of the digital competence of future teachers in an online university

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The paper presented below is framed in an online university environment in which the students are future teachers, both in Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary Education. This means that the development of their digital competence may have repercussions later in their working lives and in the training of their future pupils. METHOD. The main objective of the intervention is to improve the digital competence of future teachers after the incorporation of digital tools during the teaching of an online subject. This is a subject that has been taught in the same way for four academic years, always with the same teacher, with a total sample of 1041 students. For this purpose, through a qualitative analysis of the subject forums, the level of knowledge of digital tools of the students, before and at the end of their training, is examined and the results are compared, both in relation to the different areas of digital competence involved and in reference to the degrees of expertise (knowledge of the tools, use and creation of content). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS. The results, in line with studies by other authors, show a low initial digital competence, in relation to their digital toolsknowledge, which is greatly increased in all areas once the intervention has been carried out (overall improvement of 40% in the development of students’ digital competence). Even so, the improvement decreases as the degree of involvement required of students increases, going from an increase of more than 90% in the case of knowledge and use of tools to less than 30% progress when it comes to content creation.