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The Spanish autonomous city of Melilla, located in northwest Africa, has one of the highest academic failure and abandonment rates in Europe. An effective way to improve this situation would be to improve students’ digital competence. In order to do so, teachers must have competent digital skills themselves and also be able to teach them. To determine teachers’ level of digital competence, the Spanish adaptation of the European Framework for Digital Competence of Educators was used to analyse the self-assessment responses of teachers in training at the Faculty of Education and Sport Sciences in Melilla, Spain. Several quantitative techniques were used to analyse data collected from a questionnaire based on the items in the framework. Indicators were given to each competence using a factor analysis to contrast differences between undergraduate and postgraduate students. Correlations between some of the students’ characteristics and the competences were estimated using OLS. The results show students’ self-assessment level of digital competence in different areas and differences between the bachelor’s and master’s programmes. Digital competence gaps were also detected in teacher training, especially in security. The conclusions highlight the need to improve digital security and facilitate a higher level of digital skills in line with the framework. Indeed, more hours of training in digital competence are required while taking into account the educational context and the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge needed to teach. Equally, the same skills must be developed by educators in order for them to transmit digital competence to their students and support them in educational centres.

Digital competence has become a new type of literacy that significantly impacts on people's lives, as it is paramount to their social and occupational integration. In educational institutions, teachers play a major role in developing the digital skills of their students. This study aims to determine the key elements of teacher training in the use of innovative technologies and methodologies with a view to providing alternatives to improve the educational process. The objective is to overcome deficiencies in the training of teachers in new technologies and innovative methodologies. A qualitative study based on interview data is used in two phases. For the first phase research, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight international education experts from various fields on how best to train teachers. The second phase research involved a text mining analysis of the interview transcripts based on sentiment analysis and word counts using the advanced R statistical programming language. The second phase research was conducted using the R statistical programming language. The interview transcripts were analysed using sentiment analysis and a word cloud. The results reveal that teacher education should be practice-focused and supervised by senior teachers with the aid of students and heads of schools. Moreover, standards should be set to monitor the digital competence of teachers, who should be trained on an ongoing basis to keep them up to date in the use of digital technologies.

Biography Dr. Jose Garcia has been involved in several local and statewide recruitment events, where he was able to develop short workshops in fluid power and STEM. He is also working on the development of a new generation of hydraulic components and systems that can operate using environmentally friendlier fluids. Dr. Garcia has plans to actively continue the development of practical teaching tools that bring industry applications to the classroom. The goal of this paper is to document the activities carried out during the semester the course was taught and present the lessons learned from teaching multidisciplinary students with the backgrounds in MET, EET and CIT.The objective of the course was to provide a Project Based Learning (PBL) experience for the students. Students were tasked to specify, design, and develop prototype sub-systems for existing robots. During the semester, the students attended lectures and participated in laboratories that were heavily focused on hands-on activities relevant to design of these sub-systems. Interdisciplinary student teams were introduced early in the semester so that the requirements specification and design processes would have multiple views.In the beginning of the semester, the course focused on topics related to team management, the design process and modeling and visualization of parts and systems. The second part of the course was centered on specific technical aspects for the design of robotic systems. These topics included: batteries, sensors and data acquisition, software control, actuator mechanisms, and propulsion. The course concluded with students focusing on the construction of the robotic subsystems. The themes for these final lectures revolved around manufacturing techniques, reading and making electrical sketches, electric power conversion and design for robustness. References to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) were made to show students how a systems engineering approach improves both the process and product, to motivate the students to have a broader perspective of the topics being taught in the class, and to serve as a bonding agent between the topics, the project, the students, and the faculty.In addition to the narrative of the course, this paper also documents the assessment tools used and lessons learned during the process.Background

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