Abstract:

Teaching in a digital world has placed demands on educators to acquire a wider repertoire of competences. To help students become digitally competent, educators must first be aware of their own existing skills and then recognise potential gaps for developing their competences. However, if an educator does not know what it means to be truly competent digitally and also lacks a structured framework, this process of reflecting, identifying and developing digital competence can be challenging.

This paper will present a small-scale pilot in which we created and tested a set of guidelines and a structured framework for building a digital-competence portfolio.

The work has been done within a national project organized by FINELC, a roof organization for university language centres in Finland. The project, called 2digi, is a two-year project created after identifying a need in Finnish language centres to assist language teachers in their transition from an analogue world to a digital one. The emphasis of the project was first to define digital competence, then to create a framework for teachers to evaluate their own competences, and finally to provide teachers with tools and training resources to scaffold these competences. The project has emphasised concrete pedagogical support for teachers and has aimed to provide a structured framework for building their digital competences.

Portfolio as a tool for university teachers to evaluate and showcase their digital competence:
Our team has concentrated on evaluating teachers’ digital competence and creating guidelines on how to evaluate, document and present these competences in a structured format. We have used the Digital Competence Framework for Educators (DigCompEdu) grid and self-assessment tool as a starting point. The grid consists of six areas of digital competence, which are Professional Engagement, Digital Resources, Teaching and Learning, Assessment, Empowering Learners and Facilitating Learners’ Digital Competence. DigCompEdu follows the CEFR levels from A1 - C2, which are familiar to all language teachers, and therefore facilitates understanding one’s own level.

Based on the DigCompEdu framework, we have created a set of guidelines for building a digital-competence portfolio with instructions for teachers as well as for planners. The aim is to make teachers aware of the level of their own digital competence, and to set goals for future professional development regarding digital competence.

Pilot research about the experiences of teachers and feedback from planners:
The guide is targeted at teachers and pedagogical planners in Higher Education. We shall present results from pilot case studies and reflections of teachers as they built their digital competence portfolios . In addition to the teacher perspective, we shall discuss the perspective of pedagogical planners, who can use the guide to collect data on the digital competences of their teachers and target training towards their needs.

The results of this study will be used to further develop a framework for teachers and pedagogical planners to scaffold the process of developing the digital competence of language and communication teachers working within the university industry.

Keywords:

Digital competences, digital literacy, DigComp Edu, CPD, digital-competence portfolio, Language and Communication Teaching, higher education.