Abstract:

The extraordinary evolution of digital technologies has raised new challenges for higher education teachers regarding enhancing their digital competence and integrating them in a meaningful way for addressing students’ learning needs (Amhag et al., 2019). Moreover, during the COVID-19 outbreak, academics had to abandon face-to-face practices and embrace fully digital ways for teaching, evaluation, communication and collaboration with students and colleagues (e.g. teleconferencing, online lessons and assignments) (Alsoud and Harasis, 2021). This situation has highlighted even more educators’ digital-skills gap and the necessity for their digital technology training to keep up with the world's fast evolving educational system (Rashid & Yadav, 2020).

Although there are available online tools for self-assessment and skill development regarding digital competences, these are not provided in a structured and integrated way to support higher education teachers in identifying specific digital competence gaps and succeed efficient up-skilling. In this light, higher education institutions from four countries (Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, and Poland) have joint their efforts in a European initiative entitled as "Advancing Digital Competence in Higher Education - ADVICE" funded under the Erasmus+ program, for supporting higher education teachers in tackling their digital competence gaps and mismatches. Among others, the project aims at creating a Digital Competence Learning Hub - an open platform integrating a database of tools and resources available online and competence assessment tool.

The objective of this paper is to present preliminary results from the assessment of existing online courses in terms of whether they cover a comprehensive set of digital competencies required by higher education teachers. The study focuses on the case of Greece. Firstly, the three Greek digital platforms providing online courses for educators, namely Photodentro, National Academy of Digital Skills, and Open Courses were searched. Fifty-four online courses provided in the Greek language were found, regarding various scientific areas (e.g., health, information technology, education). The courses were evaluated, using a model developed in the context of the ADVICE project, incorporating six categories of characteristics that mirror relevant digital competences, namely core competencies, usage core competencies, online teaching strategies, ensuring positive online student experiences, assessment strategies and creating digital content. The research findings indicate that much work has to be done for improving existing online courses, since the majority fails to efficiently cover a spectrum of digital competencies. Great effort is needed concerning improving characteristics that can help educators to develop digital content for online lessons, such as skills to modify pre-existing digital content or transform static into interactive content; as well as to assess their students’ work and comprehension in the digital environment, such as to evaluate online students’ work/comprehension.

Keywords:

Higher education, digital competences, online courses, Greece.