Digital Teaching Competence in Health Sciences teachers

Abstract

Digital competence is essential for current university teaching and for improving the quality of the teaching-learning process, according to advances in information and communication technologies. The objective of the study was to identify the level of digital teaching competence among health science professors based on age, gender, profession, academic degree, years of experience, and use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies). An analytical research was conducted with 183 participants of both sexes, selected through consecutive sampling. They agreed to participate in the study and responded to the ‘DigCompEdu Check-In’ instrument via a Google form. 52.45% of the participants were female and 47.54% were male. 50.5% are psychologists, 43% are physicians and 6.7% are nutritionists. It was observed that 55.9% of professors have an intermediate level of digital competence, with the pioneer (44.3%) and leader (36.6%) categories being predominant. The logistic regression test shows that digital competence is prominent at the integrated and expert levels (p = 0.000), while age, gender, and academic degree are not predictors of digital competence (p > 0.05). The use of ICTs for less than 1 year (p = 0.007) and 1 to 3 years (p = 0.002) negatively impacts digital competence. Significant differences exist in the ‘professional commitment’ area concerning academic degree and years of teaching experience (p < 0.05). Regarding the duration of ICT use, there were significant differences in all competency areas (p < 0.05). In conclusion, an intermediate level of digital competence prevails, and the duration of ICT use serves as a predictive variable. ICT use is not influenced by gender or age of the professors.