Digital Professional Competence (DProCom) for Higher Education: A Systematic Review of Literature

Abstract

The need to discuss and refine the concept of Digital Professional Competence (DProCom) has become vital in the rapidly advancing and extensively digitized information and knowledge society. The Coronavirus pandemic revealed the usage divide among teachers and its impact on learning outcomes, thus surfacing the need to explore DProCom in Higher Education (HE) for future researchers to use findings of this review for developing pragmatic research models and professional development initiatives for student teachers of all levels. The aim of this systematic literature review is to provide the scholarly community with an overview of the definition, range of attributes, and gaps in research on DProCom from 2012 to 2022 in the context of HE. The initial search yielded 3903 outcomes, which were iterated through inclusion criteria, and 39 research articles relevant to HE were thoroughly reviewed. The results assert a lack of consistency and uniformity in terminologies being used to denote the concept of DProCom and their description in the literature. The findings confirm that DProCom is in its infancy stage. There is a need to continue research on professional competence from a global perspective to predict changes in HE teaching, professional development and quality assessment of learning outcomes to respond to the needs of HE in a digital era.