Learning and teaching digital skills in a mobile environment: Advances of a research on university professors and students of Social Sciences degree

Abstract

The advances from an interdisciplinary project currently under development are described. The project focuses on the innovation on Social Sciences university students’ and teachers’ information competencies, and its purpose is to create subject-based blended learning programs that would enhance mobile technologies. This project got a grant from the national Spanish Research, Development and Innovation Plan, focused on society challenges for their development between 2017 and 2019. The project’s research follows a previous project (2011-16) devoted to the assessment of Social Sciences students’ information competencies and produced the questionnaires IL-HUMASS and EVALCI. This new project proposes three action lines: 1) Diagnosis of teachers’ perceptions regarding their own information competence (INFOLIT) levels and their students’. 2) Design and development of an integrative model for the acquisition and assessment of Information Competences for university students and teachers; and 3) Development of disciplinary programs, as support and integrative tools of the overall project. The research methodology we are developing is qualitative-quantitative, adapting to each research aim. Thus, we use self-assessment as well as group interviews, both with teachers and students, in order to get to know the learning customs, methodologies, strategies, initiatives and best practices. From the synthesis of teachers’ and students’ viewpoints we will develop learning tools that could be personalized by means of an integrative, structural and flexible model on information competences, including specific tutorials for each discipline dealt with in the research, and the appropriate applications for smartphones, focused on digital and multimedia contents.