Developing an Educational Intervention with Social Media to Enhance the Digital Competence of Student-Teachers

Author(s):

Francesc M. Esteve-Mon(presenting / submitting)Emilio Peña-Martínez(presenting)Jordi Adell-Segura

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 06 B, Social Media and Play Pedagogies

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-23

15:30-17:00

Room:

W4.21

Chair:

Koen Aesaert

Contribution

Teachers need to be prepared to use ICT and provide technology-supported learning opportunities for their students (UNESCO, 2011). The set of knowledge and skills needed for these activities has also been called teachers’ digital competence.

Digital competence is regarded as a key competence for lifelong learning. The European Parliament and Council define the competence as involving the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology for work, leisure and communication (European Commission, 2007). According Larraz and Esteve-Mon (2015), digital competence is multidimensional and involves the integration of cognitive, relational and social abilities that we have grouped in four literacies: (a) Informational literacy: management of digital information; (b) Technological literacy: treatment of data in various formats; (c) Multimedia literacy: analysis and creation of multimedia messages; and (d) Communicative literacy: participation, public spirit and digital identity.

However, primary and secondary school teachers require not only basic digital literacy; they also need to be able to incorporate technology into their teaching praxis (Krumsvik, 2012). Digital competence needed by teachers has two dimensions: (a) mobilize knowledge, abilities, and attitudes to use ICT efficiently and (b) improve and transform classroom practices and enrich the professional development and identity of both teachers and students (Hall, Atkins, & Fraser, 2012). And, to guide the process of training and evaluation of the digital competence of current and future teachers, various administrations and institutions have developed their own frameworks for performance standards and indicators (Esteve-Mon, 2015).

Despite the importance of this competence, different studies show that student-teachers do not always achieve an appropriate level during their training period (Gutiérrez et al., 2010), and it is necessary to rethink the training programs to improve the development of student-teachers’ digital competence.

In the last 10 years, several advanced technological environments have appeared that are especially suited to the development and evaluation of competences (Redecker, 2013). Among ICT services offered by educational institutions, are learning management system (LMS) -such as Moodle, Blackboard or Sakai- which make available their community a set of online tools such as content repositories, forums, mail, assignments, etc.

However, outside of these closed and controlled environments, the Internet provides platforms like social networks with a range of possibilities more in line with current trends and professional skills. According Dohn & Dohn (2017), Web 2.0 might promote potentially richer opportunities to make learning more personally meaningful, collaborative, and socially relevant. These activities may establish connections between the out-of-school self-directed leisure of students on social networking sites. The integration of both environments poses the dilemma of opening, which although could bring positive things, also makes a great not only technological but educational and evaluation challenge (Hew & Cheung, 2013).

The main objectives of this project are to: (1) Design a technological tool to integrate the activity of social networks with the institutional LMS; (2) Develop educational activities with social media for developing student-teachers’ digital competence; and (3) Evaluate the student-teachers’ digital competence.

The following research questions are posed as a guide for our research work:

RQ1. Is the development of educational intervention technically feasible?

RQ2. What were the students’ perceptions about the usability of the educational intervention with social media?

RQ3. What was student-teachers' digital competence self-perception at the end of the process?

Method

The study, conducted between 2015 and early 2017, comprised three iterations for the refinement educational intervention, with different instruments, participants, and data collection procedures. Design-Based Research (DBR) is the methodology selected for this project, given its suitability and convenience. Research studies on educational design pose a systematic process of design, development and evaluation of a particular educational programs or materials, often related to technology as a solution to a complex problem and to generate a series of design principles (van den Akker et al., 2006). This research process follows a structure in phases and is cyclical. It is a process of analysis, design, evaluation and revision of prototypes, which is repeated until the stated objective is accomplished (Plomp & Nieveen, 2009). To collect the information generated in the various iterative cycles, the researchers used the following instruments: Interview. Formal interviews were conducted to evaluate content accuracy and technological usability of the first prototype. Five experts were asked about these aspects. Pedagogical usefulness questionnaire. The second prototype was tested to a sample of 10 students of the Educational Technology Master Degree. It was analysed with this questionnaire adapted from Esteve-Mon, Cela-Ranilla and Gisbert-Cervera (2016). It has a Likert scale, where 1 completely disagree and 5 completely agree. Digital Competence self-perception questionnaire. The third prototype was administered during a full academic semester and evaluated from this questionnaire. It has 20 items with a Likert scale of 1 to 5, where 1 not proficient at all and 5 highly proficient. The questionnaire was constructed in accordance with Larraz indicators (Larraz, 2012), validated by a sample of experts, and tested for reliability (alpha .91). It was applied to a sample of 230 university students from (84% females and 16% males) from the second (45%) and the third year (55%) of Teacher Training Degree. Social media observation. Tag2Learn tool allows you to integrate, compatible with the interoperability standard IMS-LTI, social networks and learning management system to manage and evaluate continuously and formatively work done by students in social networks and facilitating the generation of design principles that can applied in various educational methodologies (Peña-Martínez, 2016). Researchers observed social media activities through semester. The tool automatically recorded all interactions, and the researchers analysed the characteristics and qualities of the educational content as it was developed by student-teachers.

Expected Outcomes

This process generated three main outcomes: (a) a technological tool to manage and evaluate continuously and formatively the work done by students in social networks through elearning platforms; (b) the evaluation of pre-service teachers’ digital competence; and (c) design principles that can be applied in similar research. At the technological level, the tool is functional. It allows managing and evaluating in a continuous and formative way the work done by students in the social media networks (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Vine or Youtube) through LMS platforms compatible with the LTI protocol (Moodle, Sakai or Blackboard). Regarding the second output, the participants received quite high scores for their digital competence with 3.56 of mean on scale of 1 to 5. Communicative (mean = 3.71) and Multimedia (mean = 3.66) dimensions obtained higher scores, whereas Informational (mean = 3.59) and especially Technological dimension (m= 3.28) obtained the lowest. Following the approach of teacher educators’ digital competence by Krumsvik (2012), this seems to indicate that the pre-service teachers had an acceptable level in basic digital skills, especially related with social and media skills. As we have seen in this study, social media allows creating new learning possibilities to enhance instruction and learning (Tess, 2013). In line with the recommendations of Dohn & Dohn (2017), social media allows for providing a variety of evidences to make accurate observations of student-teachers’ digital competence.

References

Dohn, N.B., & Dohn, N.B. (2017). Integrating facebook in upper secondary biology instruction: A case study of students’ situational interest and participation in learning communication. Research in Science Education. doi:10.1007/s11165-016-9549-3 Esteve-Mon, F. M. (2015). La competencia digital del futuro docente: análisis de su autopercepción y evaluación de su desempeño por medio de un entorno 3D (Doctoral thesis). Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Esteve-Mon, F. M., Cela-Ranilla, J. M., & Gisbert-Cervera, M. (2016). ETeach3D: Designing a 3D virtual environment for evaluating the digital competence of preservice teachers. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 54(6), 816-839. doi:10.1177/0735633116637191 European Commission. (2007). Key competences for lifelong learning. European reference framework. Gutiérrez, A., Palacios, A., & Torrego, L. (2010). La formación de los futuros maestros y la integración de las TIC en la educación: Anatomía de un desencuentro. Revista de Educación, 352. Hall, R., Atkins, L., & Fraser, J. (2014). Defining a self-evaluation digital literacy framework for secondary educators: The DigiLit Lecister Project. Research in Learning Technology, 22. doi:10.3402/rlt.v22.21440 Hew, K. F., & Cheung, W. S. (2013). Use of web 2.0 technologies in K-12 and higher education: The search for evidence-based practice. Educational Research Review, 9, 47-64. doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2012.08.001 Krumsvik, R. (2012). Teacher educators' digital competence. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 58(3), 269-280. doi:10.1080/00313831.2012.726273  Larraz, V. (2012). La competència digital a la universitat. (Doctoral thesis). Andorra: Universitat d’Andorra. Larraz, V., & Esteve-Mon, F. M. (2015). Evaluating digital competence in simulation environments. In M. Gisbert & M. Bullen (Eds.), Teaching and learning in digital worlds: Strategies and issues in higher education. Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Peña-Martínez, E. (2016). Tag2Learn: Diseño, desarrollo e implementación de una herramienta para la integración de redes sociales en plataformas de teledocencia (Master thesis). Tarragona: Universitat Rovira i Virgili. Plomp, T., & Nieveen, N. (2009). An introduction to educational design research. Enschede, the Netherlands: Netherlands Institute for curriculum development (SLO). Redecker, C. (2013). The use of ICT for the assessment of key competences. Sevilla: Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies. European Commission. Tess, P. A. (2013). The role of social media in higher education classes (real and virtual) – A literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5), A60-A68. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.032 UNESCO. (2011). UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). van den Akker, J., Gravemeijer, K., McKenney, S. & Nieveen, N. (2006). Educational design research. Francis & Taylor.

Author Information

Francesc M. Esteve-Mon (presenting / submitting)

Universitat Jaume I

Department of Education

Castellón

Emilio Peña-Martínez (presenting)

Universidad de Almería, Spain

Jordi Adell-Segura

Universitat Jaume I, Spain

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