Digital Competence

First ordinary issue (Year 1, issue 2) - Table of content

Preface
After having won the challenge for the construction of the community working on the analysis of digital literacy and digital competence, as the inaugural issue of the journal clearly shows, some remarks must be reported: there is general agreement on the complexity of the digital literacy phenomenon, which involves individuals, but also communities, corporate, organizations and more generally society, it is clear that digital literacy is only the first step of a series of processes that must lead to the acquisition of digital competences; on this side European Commission has been a pioneer in the definition of the features of these competences, because since 2005 it stated that they must be included among the key competences of the citizen of knowledge society. This issue of the journal marks the transition from the situation described in the inaugural issue and possible future developments of the situations and processes connected with digital literacy and digital competence. In this issue of the journal we find the interaction of many aspects of digital communication and information management with more traditional "literacies" and the need for a re-conciliation with digitization. With respect to the inaugural issue of the journal the six articles now analyze a wide area of aspects, but have a common thread that joins them, a sort of ideal line, along which the ideas on digital literacy follow one another. The first paper describes the extent at which university students can be considered digitally literate and how fast changes the meaning of this definition. In the second paper the effort of describing the features of digital communities of learning and/or practices, that is how and why an online community can be considered a community of practice is proposed.The third paper proposes the re-thinking of an experience of media education with students of primary school by means of digital technologies and especially ICT. The fourth paper compares the knowledge and skills usually associated to the acquisition of the ECDL to the competences that tourist office employers expect and need for their everyday work. The fifth paper focuses on the development of suitable digital instruments in corporate and organizations and especially in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) to better face the crisis of today western societies and the sixth paper, at last, focuses on harassment and bullying as phenomena affecting schools and teachers. The paper after having reported the results of a study reports in the conclusion of the help coming from IT/ICT for the overcoming of those phenomena. In a greater detail the authors of the four papers propose the topics described below.

The Medial Diet Of University Students in Italy: An Exploratory Research
Andrea Pozzali and Paolo Ferri
In this paper the authors start from the observation of the raised inter-generational digital divide between "digital natives" and "digital immigrants", to observe that despite the claimed need of taking into account the characteristics of "digital natives", sound empirical research on these topics are lacking, especially in Europe. They present the result of a research performed during year 2008, showing how university students in Italy make use of digital technologies. The research was based on a survey made on a sample of 1086 undergraduate students at the University of Milan-Bicocca, complemented by focus groups and in-depth interviews. The results of the research evidence that, even if university students are familiar with digital technologies, the general possession of high level skills in accessing and using the Internet should not be taken for granted.

Cooperative Learning Through Communities Of Practice
Emilio Lastrucci and Angela Pascale
In this paper the authors first recall that a community, made up of a group of individuals, becomes a "community of practice" when a mutual engagement is established between its members. The mutual engagement lets the participants be involved in a common task. The main aim of a community of practice is to find the solution to a problem by sharing experiences. They examine the definition, characteristics, management and effectiveness of communities of practice, which can be seen as communities of self-managed learning, where professional development is not based on preset training courses, but on the sharing of experiences, on the identification of best practices and on the help people give each other while facing daily problems. In communities of practice it is possible to encourage ways of co-building knowledge through special teaching methods such as cooperative learning. Up until now cooperative learning, recognised as one of the best teaching methods and an effective strategy, has been limited to traditional training contexts, but it can also be carried out on teaching work involving the Web, and especially in online teaching.

Information Communication Technologies for Lifelong Learning: The Multimedia Documentation of Best Practices in Education
Laura Corazza
The paper, shows how self-instruction and lifelong learning are acquiring an increasing role due to Information Communication Technologies. The author also connects these learning opportunities to the worker ability of learning in autonomy throughout the entire span of life. Documentation of experiences, as a form of communication that allows tacit, unexpressed, informal knowledge, provides knowledge that can be widely shared. In the conclusion of her work audiovisual and multimedia documentation has proved to be a useful and efficient means of recording the experiences that are to be shared in knowledge management.

E-Skills and ICT Certification in Greek Cultural and Travel Agencies: An Exploratory Study
Fotis Lazarinis and Dimitris Kanellopoulos
In this paper the authors start from the detection of the importance of ICT skills for the enhancement and development of productivity in everyday work. They report data on the demand for professionals with ICT skills, and show that it still exceeds the supply, especially in travel industry. Soon after they present the results of the study describing the impact of ICT certification on people working in travel agencies in Greece and consider the relevance and practical value of the e-skills acquired during training from tourist employers. It clearly emerges that the ECDL ICT certification plays a crucial role in cultural and travel agencies as their employees being technologically skilful can offer better services to their customers.

Frameworks for the Benchmarking of Digital and Knowledge Management Best Practice in SME and Organizations
Antonio Cartelli
In this paper the author discusses the effects that IT/ICT have on subjects and organizations. The proposal of frameworks for digital competence assessment and the construction of suitable instruments helping students in the acquisition of this competence are the main reason for the transfer to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and organizations of analogous instruments and processes. To hit the target he compares knowledge phenomena in subjects with the strategies of knowledge management in the organizations. Soon after he describes the features of the framework for the benchmarking of best practices in SME and organizations on the basis of the results formerly obtained with virtual campuses. At last the instruments to be adopted for the acquisition of further information from all stakeholders and from the best practices to be shared are analyzed, and possible interventions towards the improvement of digital processes in SME and organizations are discussed.

Levels of Self-Efficacy among Harassed Teachers
Isabel Cantón and Consuelo Morán
The authors first examine the differences among harassed teachers and unharassed ones, as regards coping strategies, self-efficacy, and locus of control. They conduct a survey over 255 teachers (163 women and 92 men) with a set of three questionnaires: the Mobbing Perceived Questionnaire, a battery of control expectancies, and the Brief COPE to assess, respectively, mobbing perceived at work, self-efficacy, locus of control, and coping strategies. The results showed differences in self-efficacy, locus of control, and use of coping strategies depending on the teachers' degree of mobbing perceived. They believe that the efforts for preventing mobbing made by educational organizations need to be intensified, as they do not only affect teachers' quality of life but also the quality of the educational system, furthermore new technologies can have a relevant role on this side by making available all information on those phenomena.

Back to issues' list | Indietro all'elenco dei giornali