Another ALT 2021 session that caught my attention was entitled “What digital competencies do our students need to develop?” This session was sponsored by Vevox, and now I am curious about what Vevox is. The session was presented by Rob Lowney. This is not the first presentation I watch from Lowney. The slides were shared here. Lowney talked about the EDTL project and research findings. The Enhancing Digital Teaching & Learning project is funded by the Irish university system and aims to make sure students have good online learning experiences and receive appropriate training. To do so, EDTL focuses on training the instructors. Lowney cited several reports about the “growing discourse around future jobs and future skills” that require digital competencies and skills. The European Union has developed a Digital Competence Framework for Citizens offering a tool to improve the digital competence of citizens. The five areas include information and data literacy, digital content creation, communication, safety, and problem-solving. The focus of the research was on recent graduates from 2019 and 2018 to find out broad non-discipline-specific digital skills. This was a short session and left me thinking about how the recent shift to teaching online during the pandemic may have changed our expectations as instructors and the skillsets that learners now bring to online courses. I am curious about the results and follow-up studies.
