Abstract:

Widely acknowledged advantages of digital tools are their abilities to increase the amount of educational resources, to adapt to students’ needs, to be easy in use, to present relevant information. These advantages cause the ubiquitous introduction of digital tools into the education process of a university. However, the safety of these digital tools is not always obvious. The practice of digital tools usage at a university raises the necessity to evaluate the safety of these tools as a teacher does not only apply digital tools in his practice, but he also navigates students through the educational content presented in digital space. Therefore, every teacher needs to be sure in safety of digital tools he recommends to the students. To identify the aspects of digital tools needed to be evaluated for safety the analysis of the current models of safety evaluation of digital tools was made. The authors suggested a deductive justification of digital tools’ safety evaluation model based on the literature study and empirical research in the forms of expert polls, interviews, and surveys. The authors offer the ways to evaluate the safety of digital tools and suggest the measures for developing teacher’s competence in digital tools’ safety evaluation. The main result of the research is the diagnostics of pedagogical safety of digital tools offered by the authors and implemented in the education process of a university with criteria, indicators and level characteristics being described.

Keywords:

Safety pedagogy, digital tools’ safety in education, safety evaluation, pedagogical competence of digital tools’ safety evaluation.