Evaluación de las competencias digitales en estudiantes de la carrera de Comunicación de la Universidad Técnica de Machala, periodo 2021

Abstract

The present work aims to determine the different digital competences in the students of the social communication career of the Technical University of Machala, analyzing in this way the level of digital competences they possess, since they have become a fundamental requirement in the new format of education, thus being an improvement for the learning of the students, opening up new job offers. Thus, within the education sector, the presence of COVID-19 required a total reinvention so that traditional teaching systems adapt to the virtual, with interactive tools and programs that are able to attract and maintain the attention of students and guarantee their learning as the development of the activities. Cyberspace presents tools that can help a student of school, college or higher education to carry out their work in a more practical way, to be able to put it into practice at a professional or personal level, facilitating processes that sometimes become complicated, in the case of this project respective research was carried out on the ways to evaluate and analyze the competences of higher education students, of the base masses 3 digital competence frameworks were obtained which are: Matrix of ICT skills for learning developed in Chile, Standard of student performance in learning with digital technologies developed in Costa Rica and the DigComp Digital Competence Framework carried out by the European Commission, the first two were selected for having a development approach for students, However, DigComp was chosen to carry out this research because the 5 areas and 21 competencies are those that a future professional in communication must handle to be prepared in the digital age. The applied research method will be descriptive with work tools such as Digital Skills Test, which will be performed on students to know their perception of these new digital tools, the use of devices, technological tools and the effective development in digital / virtual environments to communicate and work collaboratively. This research work was carried out in the first period of 2021D1 and with the help of the Ikanos project developed by the Basque Governments that within its plan I elaborate a Test of digital Skills based on the European Framework of digital competences DigComp, where teaching students and the general public, they can measure their level of competence. However, the Individual Test of digital competences for students was used in order to evaluate the students of the communication career of the Utmach, identifying to which level they belong either this is the level, basic, intermediate, advanced or expert in the context of competences, obtaining as a result that the future professionals in Communication have mostly an intermediate level in the 5 areas that DigComp manages, making it clear that students need to develop their knowledge regarding digital skills, so that in turn they know how to function in virtual environments, the same that would help them as future communicators to adapt to the digitized changes of society.