Abstract:

Digital telecommunications now form part of teaching and are very useful for facilitating collaborative work online (McAfee, 2009). Education is optimised through the use and integration of digital tools, since they improve student learning (Barab & Roth, 2006) and interaction within the educational community (De Juanas et al., 2009). Trainee teachers must acquire a number of professional skills in order to design and implement teaching-learning processes, including digital competence, and undergraduate degree curricula demonstrate the acquisition and development of these teaching skills. However, a variety of situations has been generated, especially in initial teacher training as regards this means of working in education as applied to school staff and teaching. The aim of this study was to analyse and describe the acquisition of professional digital teaching skills in order to integrate these in teaching-learning processes. Based on the classification proposed by María H. Andersen, an analysis was conducted of 48 questionnaires administered to Education Degree students concerning the development and acquisition of digital teaching skills at university.

An analysis of the results allowed us to assess the level of acquisition of professional digital skills. The results show that students acquired most of the skills. However, despite acquiring basic and self-directed online learning skills, some skills related to the communication, organisation, retrieval and management of information still required further consolidation.

In conclusion, we highlight the need for trainee teachers to develop these digital skills based on practical experience. Moreover, we emphasise the continuing lack of techniques for the resolution of potential problems and conflicts that may arise when working collaboratively in a network. This study has prompted us to re-consider some issues concerning the curriculum design of subjects, and particularly the need to develop practices that address possible problems that may arise in the integration of digital telecommunications in education. We therefore consider that the theoretical component of university training should be contrasted with practical experience in authentic contexts, to facilitate trainee teachers' own digital skills learning process. However, a variety of problems has been generated in relation to the creation and operational dynamics of digital competences, and these should be treated as cross-curricular skills in initial teacher training programmes.

Keywords:

Professional digital teaching, higher education, initial teacher training programmes, collaborative work online.