On 7 September at 14.00 Külli Kallas will defend the doctoral thesis “Development, validation and application of the Digitest“.
Supervisor:
Professor Margus Pedaste, University of Tartu
Opponent:
Professor Ove Edvard Hatlevik, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway)
Summary
How do you know whether you are digitally competent? And what actually is digital competence?
Digital competence includes the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to use digital technologies effectively. In today’s technology-rich world, digital tools are an unavoidable – same in education, where students must use technology meaningfully for learning, problem solving, and collaboration. Developing these abilities is a major challenge for students. It’s a hard nut to crack also for teachers, as digital competence is defined as a general competence in the national curriculum.
Unlike for example mathematics skills, which can be assessed with mathematics exam, digital competence for learning is difficult to assess because the digital world changes constantly and there is ongoing debate about which digital skills are truly necessary for learning. This doctoral thesis contributes to solving this problem through the development of the Digitest – an electronic, real-life task-based assessment instrument designed for primary and lower secondary school students.
The Digitest measures nine dimensions of digital competence for learning. Six focus on knowledge and skills, including operational use of digital tools, communication, programming, digital content creation, understanding rules in digital environments, and online safety. Three dimensions focus on attitudes, such as students’ intentions for using digital technologies, technology-related anxiety, and confidence in their own abilities.
In addition, the Digitest enables us to identify different student groups based on their combinations of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This allows teachers not only to assess students’ digital competence, but also to better understand learners’ different needs and support the development of digital competence in a more evidence-based way.
