Teachers’ Digital Skills Readiness During COVID-19 Pandemic

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i08.21011

Keywords:

Continuing Education, Digital Skills, Digital Readiness, Digital Teaching, Teachers' Digital Skills, Teacher Professional Development.

Abstract


The COVID-19 crisis revealed the necessity for teachers to have digital skills in order to effectively teach online. Teachers should be able to exploit, use, and apply digital technologies in all educational activities. This paper investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding their digital skills for performing their teaching and professional responsibilities during the pandemic. More than eight hundred teachers participated in a survey regarding the use of digital technologies in their teaching and their professional responsibilities. Indicative digital tools that can be used by digital competent teachers are also presented to cover all areas of the teachers’ professional activities. Their answers revealed that they mostly used digital tools for finding, evaluating, and developing educational resources as well for teaching. They also used digital tools for self-study, students’ assessment, as well as interacting and communicating with students. However, they hardly used digital tools for other teaching activities such as feedback and final evaluation of the students, or revising the educational resources. Finally, they could not deal with long-term planning, management, and development of either their school or education in general. Although it is important for teachers to effectively respond to their daily emergent teaching responsibilities, consideration should also be given to the long-term planning and development of the digital school and digital education in general.

Author Biographies

Maria Perifanou, University of Macedonia

Dr. Maria Perifanou is an Italian Lecturer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an adjunct faculty member at the Hellenic Open University, and a Senior Researcher at the Smart and Mobile Learning Environments (SMILE) Lab of the University of Macedonia (GR) (http://smile.uom.gr/) in the field of CALL and TEL. Over the last ten years, she has collaborated with various European research institutions on more than 35 EU projects having multiple roles i.e. Coordinator of the Open Education Europa Portal, principal investigator of the LangMOOC project, etc. Currently, she works for six EU projects, including the DC4LT and the OPENLangNET Erasmus+ projects, having the roles of projects’ initiator, scientific manager, and senior researcher. Dr. Maria Perifanou is an Italian Lecturer at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and a senior researcher at the Smart and Mobile Learning Environments (SMILE) Lab of the University of Macedonia (GR) in the field of CALL and TEL. Over the last ten years, she has collaborated with various European research institutions on more than 35 EU projects having multiple roles i.e. Coordinator of the Open Education Europa Portal, principal investigator of the LangMOOC project, etc. Currently, she works for six EU projects, including the DC4LT and the OPENLangNET Erasmus+ projects, having the roles of projects’ initiator, scientific manager and senior researcher. Her research interests include CALL, TEL, MOOCs, OERs, Teachers Training.

Anastasios A Economides, University of Macedonia

Professor Anastasios A. Economides is the Director of SMILE (Smart & Mobile Interactive Learning Environments, http://smile.uom.gr) lab and the CONTA (Computer Networks and Telematics Applications, http://conta.uom.gr) group at the University of Macedonia (UoM, http://www.uom.gr), Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. His research interests include mobile, personalized & collaborative learning, as well as user experience & acceptance of smart IoT systems & services. He has published two (2) books, more than one hundred (100+) peer-reviewed journal papers, one hundred fifty (150+) peer-reviewed conference papers, and twenty (20+) peer-reviewed chapter books. He has received over 6000 citations, h-index = 41, i10-index = 115, (2020): https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1AAOD6YAAAAJ&hl=en

Katerina Tzafilkou, University of Macedonia

Katerina Tzafilkou is a postdoctoral researcher in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Emotion Recognition in University of Macedonia (GR). She holds a Ph.D. and a M.Sc. degree in Information Systems, and a B.Sc. in International and European Studies. She is also a lecturer in the International Hellenic University (GR).

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Published

2021-04-23

How to Cite

Perifanou, M., Economides, A. A., & Tzafilkou, K. (2021). Teachers’ Digital Skills Readiness During COVID-19 Pandemic. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 16(08), pp. 238–251. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i08.21011

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Papers