Design, Validation and Implementation of a Questionnaire to Assess Teenagers’ Digital Competence in the Area of Communication in Digital Environments

Abstract

This article describes the process of design, validation, and implementation (N = 609) of a questionnaire drawn up ad hoc to assess the digital competence of compulsory education students (ages 11 to 13) in the area of communication. The test measures students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes in the six competences that make up the area of communication, as established in the Framework for the Development and Knowledge of Digital Competence in Europe (DigComp): interacting through new technologies, sharing of information and content, online citizen participation, collaboration through digital technologies, netiquette, and digital identity management. The purposes of the study are to design and validate an instrument to assess compulsory education students’ digital competences in the area of communication based on their knowledge, skills, and attitudes and to analyse such instrument’s psychometric characteristics with special emphasis on its reliability and validity. The method used consisted of the implementation of various psychometric validation techniques and the analysis of the results based on statistical descriptions. Items show adequate discrimination and difficulty indices. Validity was guaranteed through expert judgement and factorial analysis of the test. The conclusion stresses the pressing need for education centres to provide students with adequate educational-communicative training.

Design and Validation of a Novel Tool to Assess Citizens’ Netiquette and Information and Data Literacy Using Interactive Simulations

“…Thus, we selected two use cases following different approaches: (1) a test based on the IDL competence area and (2) a test based on netiquette DC. Both approaches have their singularities but are valid and have been selected by different stakeholders, e.g., based on competence area [102] and based on DC [24]. So, the main objective of our study was to investigate the peculiarities of both approaches and describe the design principles applied during the different steps of the development of the tests.…”

Evaluación de la competencia digital del alumnado de Educación Primaria

“…Los resultados obtenidos en esta investigación pueden llevarnos a pensar que el niño no adquiere habilidades digitales de forma inherente por haber nacido en una era digital; sino que precisa de una formación adecuada que le permita utilizar esas habilidades digitales de forma creativa, ética, comunicativa, estética, etc. (Pérez-Escoda et al, 2016;Iglesias-Rodríguez et al, 2021). Esto es, estar en contacto con las TIC no asegura que el usuario sepa utilizarlas ni que su NCD sea superior al de alumnos que no disponen de grandes infraestructuras tecnológicas.…”

“…Por ende, y considerando este último resultado, a nuestro juicio son dos los factores que se han de considerar relevantes: la eficacia en el empleo de los recursos, puesto que no solo se trata de que el estudiante se sitúe frente a un dispositivo tecnológico, sino de hacerlo adecuadamente, aspecto lógicamente que requiere la existencia de recursos, así como una cuidadosa planificación didáctica para integrar el mismo al servicio de la mejora del proceso de aprendizaje y del desarrollo de unas mejores competencias digitales (Comisión Europea, 2018. Y ello, y este sería el segundo factor, en ocasiones no tiene que ver, coincidiendo con otros autores, con el tipo de centro escolar, sino con la adecuada formación de los docentes y de unas actitudes apropiadas para su empleo (Pérez-Escoda et al, 2016;Iglesias-Rodríguez et al, 2021).…”

Level of Digital Teaching Competence on the Verge of the Post Pandemic

“…Thus, the use of devices such as cell phones, laptops and others increased their sales in just two years, being these a primary need at home to have a virtual education in the development of teaching-learning, the use of these devices significantly affected the academic performance of students as they have access to quality information and in abundance [25], forcing the teacher to do more research on the subject to be treated in the classroom [19]. Questionnaires on digital competencies were developed, designed, implemented and validated in different areas that had ICT as the first ally and showed difficulty in digital competencies [26] even mapping the educational institutions, the same results were obtained as in the higher level [27].…”