Book review: Required ITS skills in education to compete in 4IR
By Shalin Hai-Jew, Kansas State University
IT and the Development of Digital Skills and Competences in Education
Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos, Miltiadis D. Lytras, and Xi Zhang
IGI Global
2021
332 pp.
Information and communications technology (ICT) has been broadly adopted into human societies and affect virtually every aspect of people’s lives. ICT enables mass social sharing of information across the world; it enables a range of social connectivity and interactions. It enables remote e-learning and virtual labs. Of late, it has enabled swaths of humanity to work in bio-safe ways from a distance. It is enabled various industries to function with automation. It enables people to conduct business from a distance. Financial technologies enable banking, stock market trades, and other transactions.
For peoples to compete credibly in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), societies have to take on audacious goals of mass education to encourage technology learning, at every age and developmental level. Beyond basic ICT skills—using various types of software, documenting observed technology phenomena, coding, running macros, managing automated machines, innovating with technologies—the future requires intelligent anticipation of what is to come. This is beyond what is already emergent: cloud computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain, mobile, crypto, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos, Miltiadis D. Lytras, and Xi Zhang’s edited compilation IT and the Development of Digital Skills and Competences in Education (2021) offers an international sense of how various governments, institutions of higher education, and primary schools are positioning for this future. To position well for the future, at every stage, people stand to benefit from continually acquiring the knowledge, skills and abilities / attitudes (KSAs) for a technological present and future. These are skills that work for the present but also those that prepare people for the future, with generalizable capabilities that apply in other contexts. There has to be an openness to learn additional skills and to retrain. There has to be an accurate understanding of one’s actual skills and one’s shortcomings.
Domitilla Magni, Beatrice Orlando, and Manlio Del Giudice’s “Exploiting Digital Skills in Higher Education: A Case Study Analysis” (Ch. 1) introduces The Little Genius International school and a concerted effort by the school to link learning with the broader world. The school practices the concept of University 4.0 as “a new scenario that brings the concept of education into a fully automated and interconnected phase” with impacts on various aspects of the institution (p. 2); this approach “trains students oriented towards sustainability, improving their active roles in an increasingly smart and digital society (p. 13). Learners will require a range of soft skills including “problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, knowledge networking, emotional intelligence and team coordination, (and) cognitive flexibility” (p. 7) to adapt, based on a SWOT analysis of technological innovations. The way forward for educational institutions involves considering the respective needs of various stakeholder groups and working to address those needs and working at “promoting local culture and economy through supply and sub-supply relationships” (p. 12). The Little Genius International ICE® educational system for digital natives program strives to prepare learners for the technological present and future.
The advent of advanced technologies results in both job destruction (through automation and AI) but also job creation. Nicole Palan and Andreas Schober’s “The Need for (Increased) ICT Skills in the Era of Digitalization” (Ch. 3) is based on an analysis of 73,000 job announcements in the Styria region (287 municipalities) of Austria, in order to better understand the required ICT skills. The coauthors used data mining to extract key words from the collected job announcements.
Such labor needs are defined to inform the courses available in educational institutions, training programs, on-the-job training, and other applications. This information stands to inform government policy and programs for advancing the professional skills in the population. The co-researchers set a baseline understanding with a descriptive analysis of the region, the workforce, the general population and its demographics (including education level), the local industries, and other information.
They found that ICT skills are required even for jobs requiring the lowest level of education. If people are to have chances for advancement, they need to acquire more than low education levels:
Another finding of note is that “’programmer/programming’ were particularly relevant for persons with an apprenticeship certificate and graduates of universities of applied sciences” (Palan & Schober, 2021, p. 48).
Many of the most highly educated are clustered in Graz, the capital city of Styria, and the second largest city in Austria (after Vienna). Further out, there are fewer jobs and lower rates of the college educated in the population. Graz is also “the main job engine—even more so for the ICT-related jobs” (Palan & Schober, 2021, p. 52). There is a need to build out fast internet connectivity infrastructure. The authors observe a risk of a digital divide if people across the population cannot be brought up to speed in ICT knowledge and skills, with long-term labor market effects. For those locations on the periphery, they will have to find other specializations in order to compete to provide livelihoods for the citizens.
Indonesia faces particular challenges in providing Industry Education Reform 4.0 given its unique geography as an island country with some 17,504 islands and 270 million people as of 2018. Adhi Prasetio, Grisna Anggadwita, and Rina D. Pasaribu’s “Digital Learning Challenge in Indonesia” (Ch. 4) describes the nation’s work at reforming education with a focus on the Internet for digital learning, supported by “a flexible curriculum and online certification” to actualize this educational reform (p. 56). They describe this priority agenda:
Given the challenges of providing equitable access to education, the Internet is seen as a possible conduit for educational provision. At the time of this work, more than half of Indonesia’s population had access to Internet connectivity (p. 58). Indonesia’s competitive ranking is 50/141 countries according to the World Economic Forum in 2019 and it has a declining infrastructure ranking at 72 (Prasetio, Anggadwita, & Pasaribu, 2021, p. 63), down from prior years. This country ranked “111th out of 176 countries in the Information and Communication Technology Development Index as of 2019 (p. 63). The government aims to digitize schools broadly (p. 65). This study found varying Internet penetration based on age groups with especially high engagement in the 15 – 39 age range (p. 66).
Still, much work is needed to build out Internet access for all its citizens.
The animating narrative for educational reform is economic growth for this developing country to adapt to 4IR, with an effective labor force. Perhaps research and development (R&D) can be strengthened not only through education but commercializing R&D achieved in universities. Industrial productivity may be heightened. Aligning education with market needs stands to benefit both the learners and society writ large. Developing online certification bodies may help advance the IT industry (Prasetio, Anggadwita, & Pasaribu, 2021, p. 67).
Vandana Singh and Pallavi Mathur’s “Women Empowerment through ICT” (Ch. 5) frames various ICT endeavors of the Indian government as helping women, directly and indirectly. This work emphasizes the importance of using ICT to improve “women’s economic activities in the field of trade, governance, education, health, crafts, employment in formal as well as informal sectors” (p. 72). They note the importance of not limiting ICT only to the “upper section of the society” (p. 72), given social stratifications, but needing to democratize access to ICT. In India, as elsewhere, there is ingrained discrimination against women: “female feticide, domestic violence, early marriages, gender-based discrimination at workplace,” and others. (p. 79)
The co-authors summarize various ICT initiatives of the government of India and how these stand to benefit women: E-Sakhi, a digital literacy program; Krishi Vigyan Kendra, for supporting farmers with agricultural technologies; computerized milk collection centers; the Gyandoot project involving e-commerce and e-government in an intranet project “connecting 21 rural cybercafes”; FOOD INDIA to conduct research on “social development and implementing welfare programs in the field of water and sanitation, employment generation, poverty alleviation, cost-effective housing, education, health, energy conservation, ICTs, institutional and capacity building for women networks” (Singh & Mathur, 2021, p. 77); the Aksahay Project for women’s empowerment in literacy and economics, and others (pp. 75 - 76). In many of the cases, women seem to be beneficiaries indirectly; in others, they seem to benefit more directly and in a more targeted fashion. The focus on how women benefit from various government policies is important, and particular supports for their needs is more critical than ever, especially given “a plethora of girls in the rural areas who drop out from the school and end up in employment or doing household chores” (p. 79).
Ensuring that new technologies do not just privilege the few is important. Social empowerment for all citizens stands to benefit society as a whole, even as new complexities and changes may arise.
Edgar Oliver Cardoso Espinosa, Jésica Alhelí Cortés Ruiz, and María Trinidad Cerecedo Mercado’s “The Training of the Digital Competence at the Postgraduate Level for a Knowledge-Based Economy” (Ch. 6) uses a developmental stage framework. There is the sense that postgraduate studies is “the predominant space where professionals have the opportunity to complement their training to expand their development opportunities in the areas of teaching and research, as well as deepening into a specific field of knowledge; therefore, it offers three levels of training: specialization, master’s and doctorate” (p. 90).
In this particular case, the model of social collaboration around information analysis and co-creation and knowledge creation in a network context was conceptualized for a post-graduate course. Theirs is a social community “that develops innovation, scientific, and technological projects as a substantial activity in which information is a fundamental resource in the development of the generation of new knowledge” (Espinosa, Ruiz, & Mercado, 2021, p. 82). The designed sequence of learning follows: “identifying the problems; planning the search for information; selection of information sources; information processing, organization, and storage; as well as the communication of results” (p. 82). A core “digital competence” is required, defined as “the set of capabilities focused on the use of ICT to obtain, store, organize, present, and exchange information” (p. 82).
In their review of the literature, the coauthors include “DIGCOMP” described as “knowledge, skills and attitudes in five areas: Information, Communication, Content Creation, Security and Problem Solving, with 21 sub competencies that refer to key learning for citizen participation in the 21st century” (Ferrari, 2013; Enochsson, 2019, as cited in Espinosa, Ruiz, & Mercado, 2021, p. 91). The conceptualization of digital competence training dimensions at the postgraduate level include the following categories: “technical practices, academic practices, training activities, creation of content, (and) research management and dissemination” (p. 92).
The core goal of the purpose-built learning is to prepare human capital for the world of 4IR, with the introductions of advanced technologies into various fields of human endeavors. The current time is one of so much promise but also stressful new paradigms and realities.
The advent of technologies should be inclusive, so that all parts of society may engage and benefit. One such subgroup involves the elderly, referred to as those in the “third age”. Venetis Kanakaris and Maria Pavlis Korres’ “Investigating the Educational Needs of Elderly People Within the Scope of an Educational Program on the Use of Social Media Networks by Smartphones” (Ch. 7) involves the study of residents of two elderly care centers in Northern Greece. These individuals range in age from the 60s through their 80s. The co-researchers wanted to know how interested the residents were in engaging educational programs (on using email, on conducting banking, on shopping, and other practical functions) via smartphones. They summarize:
Barriers to joining social media may include a lack of technical knowledge and skills or even a sense of intimidation (p. 101). Stereotypes of older people as being less adaptive or less amenable to learning may also dissuade some. There may be dispositional barriers to learning “based on attitudes, beliefs, past experiences, and psychology of learners, e.g. stress related to the fear of failure or criticism, negative educational experiences, biases regarding health and age” (p. 104).
Technology ownership varied, with “almost 95% of the study participants own(ing) a smartphone, 30% own(ing) a tablet and 25% own(ing) a laptop or a PC” (Kanakaris & Korres, 2021, p. 108). The study participants had a varied educational history, with the highest levels of education involving the gamut: elementary, high school, technical college, and university. Their choices of educational medium, in descending order, included the smart phone, tablet, and laptop [with equal gender representation in terms of these preferences] (p. 109).
The researchers observe: “A remarkably interesting finding is that only women, and, indeed, the overwhelming majority (90%), wish to learn about e-banking and online shopping” (Kanakaris & Korres, 2021, p. 110). Both sexes expressed interest in learning about Internet & Email, Social Media, and Google Applications (albeit with more female than male interest), and then more equal male-female interest in “Viber, Whatchup” (p. 110). The educational level has an effect on preference to engage with technologies, with those with higher education equipped with the skills to engage (p. 114). Social media were found appealing to “third age” populations (p. 116). However, if lifelong learning is to be realized, programmatic outreach to the elderly would benefit all.
Eleni Karakolidou, Piera Leftheriotou, and Maria Pavlis Korres’ “Facilitating the Educational Process in Synchronous Group Advisory Online Meetings in the Hellenic Open University” (Ch. 8) describes research conducted in 2019 around the practices of synchronous online group advisory meetings held via Skype for Business. The research focuses on the experiences of the tutors and learners in this mediated collaborative experience. They write that “learners scored high in terms of interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning between each other and their tutor, especially when working in online workgroups, while the learning process was facilitated by immediate e-tutor feedback, which resolved queries, and the effective facilitation of the discussion” (p. 122). Learners need to have what feels to be a “meaningful relationship” with peers as important (p. 122).
The research team also identified the importance of a skillful educator to promote higher engagement. They write: “A positive correlation was found in terms of interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning between learners and between learners and educators, as, the more direct and collaborative the educator is, the greater the promotion of interaction between learners” (Karakolidou, Leftheriotou, & Korres, 2021, p. 133).
In a time of a global pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 rampant, learning has to go online, so people do not expose each other to the potential fatal risks of the pathogenic virus. Giovanni Bronzetti, Graziella Sicoli, and Dominga A. Ippolito’s “Innovative System for Education: The Advent of E-Learning in the University System in the Pandemic Age” (Ch. 9) describes the need for expeditious innovations and reorganization in higher education in Italy to meet the moment. A critical tool in this time: digital management systems. This work is based on a survey of students at the University of Calabria, in order to assess their readiness to learn online and their attitudes about online learning. This team writes:
The researchers also assess student experiences with e-learning, such as their levels of satisfaction with online courses vs. in-person classroom ones, their senses of validity of e-learning given the emergency context, and whether the university’s turn to innovative technologies is successful or not. The survey study reads like an environmental scan.
Certainly, the institutions of higher education that have survived this highly disruptive pandemic have plenty of data to assess how well their turn to online learning has worked. Likely, all have identified gaps and efforts to move in the proper direction.
Kadir Demir and Hatice Ferhan Odabasi’s “The Importance of Digital Fluency in Terms of Disruptive and Emerging Technologies” (Ch. 10) points to a need for an educated and enabled workforce with “high-level digital literacy capabilities around the world” (p. 162); without those, various opportunities will be left unexplored and unexploited. ICT skills are required to “receive education, to have a job and to fulfill the civic duties” (p. 164). This work conceptualizes people at four stages of ICT literacy: anti-literate (and rejecting of technologies, maybe like a Luddite); pre-literate (with “the potential and curiosity to develop knowledge, skills and understanding of an existing technology”); literate (with “basic skills to fully utilize digital technologies”), and fluent as those who know which digital tools to use when and how…and can adapt to new technologies and situations (p. 165). The coauthors assert the criticality of intellectual capabilities as a foundation (including reasoning, engaging complexity, collaboration, and others). They cite the importance of proper discernment of factual information from various sources. They highlight important capabilities such as “algorithmic thinking and programming” (p. 166). They emphasize the importance of being able to use spreadsheets, databases, and networks (p. 166). Using Kavis’ Hierarchy of Competence, they point to the importance of “conscious competence” for right analysis and “unconscious competence” to achieve the correct intuitions in the ICT space (p. 169). Indeed, using ICT well involves proper understanding of applied laws and ethics here, so technologies are used in “safe, legal and ethical” ways (pp. 174 – 175), by both teachers and learners.
Amira Sghari’s “How Does the Digital Transformation Affect the Job of University Teachers? Summary of the Required Skills of University Teachers” (Ch. 11) highlights various posited models for digital competencies for teachers in higher education. This research is based on work done at the Virtual University of Tunis in Tunisia. Blašková, et al in 2014 defined various categories of digital competence defined as: “professional competence, educational competence, motivational competence, communicational competence, personal competence, science & research competence, (and) publication competence” (Blašková, et al., 2014, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 189).
A 21st century competencies model from Lopukhova and Makeeva include ways of thinking (including “creativity and innovation; critical thinking, problem solving, decision making; learning to learn, meta cognition”), ways of working [“communication; collaboration (teamwork)”], tools for working (“information literacy”), and “living in the world citizenship—local and global” (Lopukhova & Makeeva, 2019, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 190).
There are ideas of digital competencies drawn from Pozos (2010), with competencies for planning learning experiences in various face-to-face (F2F) and blended modalities, and within those modalities creating collaborative learning experiences, tutoring, assessing knowledge; managing growth and professional development to support ICT; engaging in pedagogical research; enabling diversity and ethics in the uses of ICTs, and addressing environmental concerns in the use of ICT for teaching and learning (Pozos, 2012, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 191). Across the various categories are levels of competence: “basic knowledge,” “knowledge deepening,” and “knowledge generation” (Pozos, 2012, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 191).
The Virtual University of Tunis also evolved some of their own competencies for their faculty with a skills framework across four areas:
These areas enable coherence and focus in the applied work. Particular skills include “pedagogy and technology,” research and use of free educational resources, “screenwriting an online course,” “mediatization of an online course,” teaching with the Moodle LMS, evaluating learning online, and tutoring online (Sghari, 2021, p. 194).
Kristina Posavec’s “Using ICT in the Classroom for Acquiring Digital Competences: Three Case Studies from Croatian Primary Schools” (Ch. 12) shows some of the challenges of having centralized curriculums in diverse supra-national organizations such as the European Union. This work describes research involving three primary school teachers at three different schools and their students in using the CRISS platform in the 2018 – 2019 school year, a project financed by the European Commission through its Horizon2020 programme (p. 198). The work involves how to teach digital competence to students and certify their abilities (p. 202). The research is written up as three individual narrative cases: one a Croatian Language Teacher in an upper primary school, another a math teacher, and another a teacher generalist in a lower primary school. Across the board, there were struggles with technical problems. There were outsized efforts at adapting the curriculum to the students and their local conditions.
There was consensus around the low points of the project in three categories: technical (such as a non-performing CRISS platform during some of the time), curriculum with the pre-defined teaching scenarios (a majority of which “did not fit to national curriculum for primary schools in Croatia), and time consumption especially for teachers with little digital technology experience in teaching and learning (Posavec, 2021, p. 210).
Universities are major locations not only for learning but for R&D, much of it bleeding edge. Universities attract world-class talent. Saarce Elsye Hatane, Eric Oktavianus, Josua Tarigan, and Ferry Jie’s “New Trends in Intellectual Capital Disclosures of Higher Degree Institutions in Indonesia” (Ch. 13) involves an inventory of universities’ web-facing intellectual capital disclosures as intangible assets. The general thinking is that such disclosures are part of the universities displaying their credibility to a public, but given the wide diversity of consumers of such contents, total transparency in such sharing may have negative and unintended effects as well. Their systematized analysis found that there is “extensive use of intellectual capital disclosure through websites” at Indonesian universities, especially “in internal capital, while the disclosure of external capital and human capital is still limited” (p. 217). The creation and sharing of intellectual capital is important for a healthy and functioning university, but there are also interests in not leaking advantage to others. Targeted and strategic revelations may attract “public and government fund(s)” (p. 231). That said, such revelations need to be accurate so as not to cause confusion. This study found that the more autonomy a unit has in controlling their web-facing side, the more web-based intellectual capital disclosure may occur (p. 228). They write: “…autonomy and size give positive impact toward web-based intellectual capital disclosure, while age and competitiveness give no significant effect to web-based intellectual capital disclosure” (p. 230).
Kapilan N. and Vidhya P.’s “Role of Virtual Laboratories in Teaching Learning Processes of India” (Ch. 14) takes on a long-standing challenge in higher education: to provide remote labs and simulated labs for hands-on learning in an effective way. In a country that turns out some of the most accomplished engineers globally, India has a vested interest in building the human capital in their populations. This work describes how the Ministry of Human Resource Department started establishing virtual labs in some higher educational institutions in-country to enable hands-on experiments beginning in 2009. They worked with various institutions and universities to offer virtual lab experiments “in various engineering branches such as mechanical engineering, computer science and engineering, chemical engineering, biotechnology engineering, electronics and communications, electrical engineering and civil engineering” (p. 240). Virtual labs (VLs) are seen to increase student engagement and academic performance, levels of critical thinking, and problem solving abilities, without the safety issues of conventional labs; they are more cost-effective and may be accessed “anytime and anywhere” in terms of the simulations (N & P, 2021, pp. 242 - 243) but not the remote labs. The researchers found some limitations in VL usage: “Faculty members may not be serious when students (are) performing experiments” (p. 245). There may be potential distractions in the learning. Simulation-types of experiments “will not give hands-on training,” and learners may not discover the experimental errors (p. 245). Those “remote triggered VLs” require advance booking and are limited by “the preparation of the specimen, loading and unloading of the specimens” (p. 246). This work does show the need for actual investment to build such virtual lab capabilities.
Shalin Hai-Jew works as an instructional designer / researcher at Kansas State University. Her email is shalin@ksu.edu.
Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos, Miltiadis D. Lytras, and Xi Zhang
IGI Global
2021
332 pp.
For peoples to compete credibly in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), societies have to take on audacious goals of mass education to encourage technology learning, at every age and developmental level. Beyond basic ICT skills—using various types of software, documenting observed technology phenomena, coding, running macros, managing automated machines, innovating with technologies—the future requires intelligent anticipation of what is to come. This is beyond what is already emergent: cloud computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation, augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain, mobile, crypto, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos, Miltiadis D. Lytras, and Xi Zhang’s edited compilation IT and the Development of Digital Skills and Competences in Education (2021) offers an international sense of how various governments, institutions of higher education, and primary schools are positioning for this future. To position well for the future, at every stage, people stand to benefit from continually acquiring the knowledge, skills and abilities / attitudes (KSAs) for a technological present and future. These are skills that work for the present but also those that prepare people for the future, with generalizable capabilities that apply in other contexts. There has to be an openness to learn additional skills and to retrain. There has to be an accurate understanding of one’s actual skills and one’s shortcomings.
Connecting Higher Education to the Broader World
Domitilla Magni, Beatrice Orlando, and Manlio Del Giudice’s “Exploiting Digital Skills in Higher Education: A Case Study Analysis” (Ch. 1) introduces The Little Genius International school and a concerted effort by the school to link learning with the broader world. The school practices the concept of University 4.0 as “a new scenario that brings the concept of education into a fully automated and interconnected phase” with impacts on various aspects of the institution (p. 2); this approach “trains students oriented towards sustainability, improving their active roles in an increasingly smart and digital society (p. 13). Learners will require a range of soft skills including “problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, knowledge networking, emotional intelligence and team coordination, (and) cognitive flexibility” (p. 7) to adapt, based on a SWOT analysis of technological innovations. The way forward for educational institutions involves considering the respective needs of various stakeholder groups and working to address those needs and working at “promoting local culture and economy through supply and sub-supply relationships” (p. 12). The Little Genius International ICE® educational system for digital natives program strives to prepare learners for the technological present and future.
Sharing Financial Information Globally with XBRL
Maurizio Rija’s “XBRL and Smart Technologies” (Ch. 2) promotes the usage of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a common global language to share financial information in financial statements and reports, that are human- and machine-readable. He writes: XBRL “removes almost all pitfalls of traditional format of financial reports such as paper-based, pdf, HTML, word etc., these are static in nature not enable the preparers and users to easy comparison, analysis and re-using of previous reports for the preparation of current years (sic) reports” (p. 22). The heightened transparency of financial information enables more global uniformity of accounting data, optimally to international standards. XBRL originated in 1998 and is based on XML or extensible markup language technology. Some 60 countries use XBRL for business and financial reporting, with China as a first adopter and advocate (p. 27).
Figure 1. Data Wheel
Defining Foundational ICT Skills
The advent of advanced technologies results in both job destruction (through automation and AI) but also job creation. Nicole Palan and Andreas Schober’s “The Need for (Increased) ICT Skills in the Era of Digitalization” (Ch. 3) is based on an analysis of 73,000 job announcements in the Styria region (287 municipalities) of Austria, in order to better understand the required ICT skills. The coauthors used data mining to extract key words from the collected job announcements.
Such labor needs are defined to inform the courses available in educational institutions, training programs, on-the-job training, and other applications. This information stands to inform government policy and programs for advancing the professional skills in the population. The co-researchers set a baseline understanding with a descriptive analysis of the region, the workforce, the general population and its demographics (including education level), the local industries, and other information.
They found that ICT skills are required even for jobs requiring the lowest level of education. If people are to have chances for advancement, they need to acquire more than low education levels:
It is interesting to note that 70 per cent more ICT-relevant jobs were posted for medium than for low education levels. Thus, it should be of high importance for education policy to increase both ICT-knowledge and the formal education level for people with only compulsory education in order to increase their job opportunities in the long run. (Palan & Schober, 2021, p. 45)
Another finding of note is that “’programmer/programming’ were particularly relevant for persons with an apprenticeship certificate and graduates of universities of applied sciences” (Palan & Schober, 2021, p. 48).
Many of the most highly educated are clustered in Graz, the capital city of Styria, and the second largest city in Austria (after Vienna). Further out, there are fewer jobs and lower rates of the college educated in the population. Graz is also “the main job engine—even more so for the ICT-related jobs” (Palan & Schober, 2021, p. 52). There is a need to build out fast internet connectivity infrastructure. The authors observe a risk of a digital divide if people across the population cannot be brought up to speed in ICT knowledge and skills, with long-term labor market effects. For those locations on the periphery, they will have to find other specializations in order to compete to provide livelihoods for the citizens.
Digital Learning Challenges to Compete in the 4IR
Indonesia faces particular challenges in providing Industry Education Reform 4.0 given its unique geography as an island country with some 17,504 islands and 270 million people as of 2018. Adhi Prasetio, Grisna Anggadwita, and Rina D. Pasaribu’s “Digital Learning Challenge in Indonesia” (Ch. 4) describes the nation’s work at reforming education with a focus on the Internet for digital learning, supported by “a flexible curriculum and online certification” to actualize this educational reform (p. 56). They describe this priority agenda:
The reform consists of two main programs: first, to improve the quality of life of Indonesian people through improving the quality of education and training and, second, to revolutionize the nation’s character through the policy of restructuring the national education curriculum (p. 56).
Given the challenges of providing equitable access to education, the Internet is seen as a possible conduit for educational provision. At the time of this work, more than half of Indonesia’s population had access to Internet connectivity (p. 58). Indonesia’s competitive ranking is 50/141 countries according to the World Economic Forum in 2019 and it has a declining infrastructure ranking at 72 (Prasetio, Anggadwita, & Pasaribu, 2021, p. 63), down from prior years. This country ranked “111th out of 176 countries in the Information and Communication Technology Development Index as of 2019 (p. 63). The government aims to digitize schools broadly (p. 65). This study found varying Internet penetration based on age groups with especially high engagement in the 15 – 39 age range (p. 66).
Still, much work is needed to build out Internet access for all its citizens.
Figure 2. Some 4IR Technologies (by jeferrb on Pixabay)
Benefitting Women through ICT Programs
Vandana Singh and Pallavi Mathur’s “Women Empowerment through ICT” (Ch. 5) frames various ICT endeavors of the Indian government as helping women, directly and indirectly. This work emphasizes the importance of using ICT to improve “women’s economic activities in the field of trade, governance, education, health, crafts, employment in formal as well as informal sectors” (p. 72). They note the importance of not limiting ICT only to the “upper section of the society” (p. 72), given social stratifications, but needing to democratize access to ICT. In India, as elsewhere, there is ingrained discrimination against women: “female feticide, domestic violence, early marriages, gender-based discrimination at workplace,” and others. (p. 79)
The co-authors summarize various ICT initiatives of the government of India and how these stand to benefit women: E-Sakhi, a digital literacy program; Krishi Vigyan Kendra, for supporting farmers with agricultural technologies; computerized milk collection centers; the Gyandoot project involving e-commerce and e-government in an intranet project “connecting 21 rural cybercafes”; FOOD INDIA to conduct research on “social development and implementing welfare programs in the field of water and sanitation, employment generation, poverty alleviation, cost-effective housing, education, health, energy conservation, ICTs, institutional and capacity building for women networks” (Singh & Mathur, 2021, p. 77); the Aksahay Project for women’s empowerment in literacy and economics, and others (pp. 75 - 76). In many of the cases, women seem to be beneficiaries indirectly; in others, they seem to benefit more directly and in a more targeted fashion. The focus on how women benefit from various government policies is important, and particular supports for their needs is more critical than ever, especially given “a plethora of girls in the rural areas who drop out from the school and end up in employment or doing household chores” (p. 79).
Ensuring that new technologies do not just privilege the few is important. Social empowerment for all citizens stands to benefit society as a whole, even as new complexities and changes may arise.
Digital Competence at the Post-Graduate Level
Edgar Oliver Cardoso Espinosa, Jésica Alhelí Cortés Ruiz, and María Trinidad Cerecedo Mercado’s “The Training of the Digital Competence at the Postgraduate Level for a Knowledge-Based Economy” (Ch. 6) uses a developmental stage framework. There is the sense that postgraduate studies is “the predominant space where professionals have the opportunity to complement their training to expand their development opportunities in the areas of teaching and research, as well as deepening into a specific field of knowledge; therefore, it offers three levels of training: specialization, master’s and doctorate” (p. 90).
In this particular case, the model of social collaboration around information analysis and co-creation and knowledge creation in a network context was conceptualized for a post-graduate course. Theirs is a social community “that develops innovation, scientific, and technological projects as a substantial activity in which information is a fundamental resource in the development of the generation of new knowledge” (Espinosa, Ruiz, & Mercado, 2021, p. 82). The designed sequence of learning follows: “identifying the problems; planning the search for information; selection of information sources; information processing, organization, and storage; as well as the communication of results” (p. 82). A core “digital competence” is required, defined as “the set of capabilities focused on the use of ICT to obtain, store, organize, present, and exchange information” (p. 82).
In their review of the literature, the coauthors include “DIGCOMP” described as “knowledge, skills and attitudes in five areas: Information, Communication, Content Creation, Security and Problem Solving, with 21 sub competencies that refer to key learning for citizen participation in the 21st century” (Ferrari, 2013; Enochsson, 2019, as cited in Espinosa, Ruiz, & Mercado, 2021, p. 91). The conceptualization of digital competence training dimensions at the postgraduate level include the following categories: “technical practices, academic practices, training activities, creation of content, (and) research management and dissemination” (p. 92).
The core goal of the purpose-built learning is to prepare human capital for the world of 4IR, with the introductions of advanced technologies into various fields of human endeavors. The current time is one of so much promise but also stressful new paradigms and realities.
Meeting Educational Needs of Elderly in Social Media on Smartphones
The advent of technologies should be inclusive, so that all parts of society may engage and benefit. One such subgroup involves the elderly, referred to as those in the “third age”. Venetis Kanakaris and Maria Pavlis Korres’ “Investigating the Educational Needs of Elderly People Within the Scope of an Educational Program on the Use of Social Media Networks by Smartphones” (Ch. 7) involves the study of residents of two elderly care centers in Northern Greece. These individuals range in age from the 60s through their 80s. The co-researchers wanted to know how interested the residents were in engaging educational programs (on using email, on conducting banking, on shopping, and other practical functions) via smartphones. They summarize:
Research findings indicate that elderly women are more willing to attend an educational program than men and key areas of their interest include access to the internet (e.g., online payments), how to create and use an e-mail account, and how to join social media networks in order to feel less isolated by communicating with other individuals or groups with the same interests. (p. 100)
Barriers to joining social media may include a lack of technical knowledge and skills or even a sense of intimidation (p. 101). Stereotypes of older people as being less adaptive or less amenable to learning may also dissuade some. There may be dispositional barriers to learning “based on attitudes, beliefs, past experiences, and psychology of learners, e.g. stress related to the fear of failure or criticism, negative educational experiences, biases regarding health and age” (p. 104).
Technology ownership varied, with “almost 95% of the study participants own(ing) a smartphone, 30% own(ing) a tablet and 25% own(ing) a laptop or a PC” (Kanakaris & Korres, 2021, p. 108). The study participants had a varied educational history, with the highest levels of education involving the gamut: elementary, high school, technical college, and university. Their choices of educational medium, in descending order, included the smart phone, tablet, and laptop [with equal gender representation in terms of these preferences] (p. 109).
The researchers observe: “A remarkably interesting finding is that only women, and, indeed, the overwhelming majority (90%), wish to learn about e-banking and online shopping” (Kanakaris & Korres, 2021, p. 110). Both sexes expressed interest in learning about Internet & Email, Social Media, and Google Applications (albeit with more female than male interest), and then more equal male-female interest in “Viber, Whatchup” (p. 110). The educational level has an effect on preference to engage with technologies, with those with higher education equipped with the skills to engage (p. 114). Social media were found appealing to “third age” populations (p. 116). However, if lifelong learning is to be realized, programmatic outreach to the elderly would benefit all.
Synchronous and Online Group Advisory Meetings in Academia
Eleni Karakolidou, Piera Leftheriotou, and Maria Pavlis Korres’ “Facilitating the Educational Process in Synchronous Group Advisory Online Meetings in the Hellenic Open University” (Ch. 8) describes research conducted in 2019 around the practices of synchronous online group advisory meetings held via Skype for Business. The research focuses on the experiences of the tutors and learners in this mediated collaborative experience. They write that “learners scored high in terms of interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning between each other and their tutor, especially when working in online workgroups, while the learning process was facilitated by immediate e-tutor feedback, which resolved queries, and the effective facilitation of the discussion” (p. 122). Learners need to have what feels to be a “meaningful relationship” with peers as important (p. 122).
The research team also identified the importance of a skillful educator to promote higher engagement. They write: “A positive correlation was found in terms of interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning between learners and between learners and educators, as, the more direct and collaborative the educator is, the greater the promotion of interaction between learners” (Karakolidou, Leftheriotou, & Korres, 2021, p. 133).
E-Learning in a Global Pandemic
In a time of a global pandemic, with SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 rampant, learning has to go online, so people do not expose each other to the potential fatal risks of the pathogenic virus. Giovanni Bronzetti, Graziella Sicoli, and Dominga A. Ippolito’s “Innovative System for Education: The Advent of E-Learning in the University System in the Pandemic Age” (Ch. 9) describes the need for expeditious innovations and reorganization in higher education in Italy to meet the moment. A critical tool in this time: digital management systems. This work is based on a survey of students at the University of Calabria, in order to assess their readiness to learn online and their attitudes about online learning. This team writes:
The survey showed that the majority of students have an adequate internet connection (82.9%) and a computer (94%). It is not to be overlooked, however, the albeit lower percentage of students who do not have adequate tools. 17.1% of students declare that they do not have an adequate internet connection and 6%, (sic) that they do not have an adequate tool to take advantage of online teaching. (Bronzetti, Sicoli, & Ippolito, 2021, p. 150)
The researchers also assess student experiences with e-learning, such as their levels of satisfaction with online courses vs. in-person classroom ones, their senses of validity of e-learning given the emergency context, and whether the university’s turn to innovative technologies is successful or not. The survey study reads like an environmental scan.
Certainly, the institutions of higher education that have survived this highly disruptive pandemic have plenty of data to assess how well their turn to online learning has worked. Likely, all have identified gaps and efforts to move in the proper direction.
Digital Fluency in the Emerging Technology Space
Kadir Demir and Hatice Ferhan Odabasi’s “The Importance of Digital Fluency in Terms of Disruptive and Emerging Technologies” (Ch. 10) points to a need for an educated and enabled workforce with “high-level digital literacy capabilities around the world” (p. 162); without those, various opportunities will be left unexplored and unexploited. ICT skills are required to “receive education, to have a job and to fulfill the civic duties” (p. 164). This work conceptualizes people at four stages of ICT literacy: anti-literate (and rejecting of technologies, maybe like a Luddite); pre-literate (with “the potential and curiosity to develop knowledge, skills and understanding of an existing technology”); literate (with “basic skills to fully utilize digital technologies”), and fluent as those who know which digital tools to use when and how…and can adapt to new technologies and situations (p. 165). The coauthors assert the criticality of intellectual capabilities as a foundation (including reasoning, engaging complexity, collaboration, and others). They cite the importance of proper discernment of factual information from various sources. They highlight important capabilities such as “algorithmic thinking and programming” (p. 166). They emphasize the importance of being able to use spreadsheets, databases, and networks (p. 166). Using Kavis’ Hierarchy of Competence, they point to the importance of “conscious competence” for right analysis and “unconscious competence” to achieve the correct intuitions in the ICT space (p. 169). Indeed, using ICT well involves proper understanding of applied laws and ethics here, so technologies are used in “safe, legal and ethical” ways (pp. 174 – 175), by both teachers and learners.
Technology Skills Required for University Teachers
Amira Sghari’s “How Does the Digital Transformation Affect the Job of University Teachers? Summary of the Required Skills of University Teachers” (Ch. 11) highlights various posited models for digital competencies for teachers in higher education. This research is based on work done at the Virtual University of Tunis in Tunisia. Blašková, et al in 2014 defined various categories of digital competence defined as: “professional competence, educational competence, motivational competence, communicational competence, personal competence, science & research competence, (and) publication competence” (Blašková, et al., 2014, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 189).
A 21st century competencies model from Lopukhova and Makeeva include ways of thinking (including “creativity and innovation; critical thinking, problem solving, decision making; learning to learn, meta cognition”), ways of working [“communication; collaboration (teamwork)”], tools for working (“information literacy”), and “living in the world citizenship—local and global” (Lopukhova & Makeeva, 2019, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 190).
There are ideas of digital competencies drawn from Pozos (2010), with competencies for planning learning experiences in various face-to-face (F2F) and blended modalities, and within those modalities creating collaborative learning experiences, tutoring, assessing knowledge; managing growth and professional development to support ICT; engaging in pedagogical research; enabling diversity and ethics in the uses of ICTs, and addressing environmental concerns in the use of ICT for teaching and learning (Pozos, 2012, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 191). Across the various categories are levels of competence: “basic knowledge,” “knowledge deepening,” and “knowledge generation” (Pozos, 2012, as cited in Sghari, 2021, p. 191).
The Virtual University of Tunis also evolved some of their own competencies for their faculty with a skills framework across four areas:
- “Documentation: research, treatment and scientific and didactic exploitation of the various available resources;
- Production: the design of learning sequences and the preparation of the necessary means for their implementation;
- Communication: support for learning through the active and participative involvement of all actors in training; by promoting several types of interactions between them;
- Evaluation: the implementation of a strategy for assessing learners’ prior learning, both in terms of certification and monitoring and coaching” (Sghari, 2021, p. 193)
These areas enable coherence and focus in the applied work. Particular skills include “pedagogy and technology,” research and use of free educational resources, “screenwriting an online course,” “mediatization of an online course,” teaching with the Moodle LMS, evaluating learning online, and tutoring online (Sghari, 2021, p. 194).
Classroom ICT for Digital Competencies
Kristina Posavec’s “Using ICT in the Classroom for Acquiring Digital Competences: Three Case Studies from Croatian Primary Schools” (Ch. 12) shows some of the challenges of having centralized curriculums in diverse supra-national organizations such as the European Union. This work describes research involving three primary school teachers at three different schools and their students in using the CRISS platform in the 2018 – 2019 school year, a project financed by the European Commission through its Horizon2020 programme (p. 198). The work involves how to teach digital competence to students and certify their abilities (p. 202). The research is written up as three individual narrative cases: one a Croatian Language Teacher in an upper primary school, another a math teacher, and another a teacher generalist in a lower primary school. Across the board, there were struggles with technical problems. There were outsized efforts at adapting the curriculum to the students and their local conditions.
There was consensus around the low points of the project in three categories: technical (such as a non-performing CRISS platform during some of the time), curriculum with the pre-defined teaching scenarios (a majority of which “did not fit to national curriculum for primary schools in Croatia), and time consumption especially for teachers with little digital technology experience in teaching and learning (Posavec, 2021, p. 210).
Intellectual Capital Disclosures
Universities are major locations not only for learning but for R&D, much of it bleeding edge. Universities attract world-class talent. Saarce Elsye Hatane, Eric Oktavianus, Josua Tarigan, and Ferry Jie’s “New Trends in Intellectual Capital Disclosures of Higher Degree Institutions in Indonesia” (Ch. 13) involves an inventory of universities’ web-facing intellectual capital disclosures as intangible assets. The general thinking is that such disclosures are part of the universities displaying their credibility to a public, but given the wide diversity of consumers of such contents, total transparency in such sharing may have negative and unintended effects as well. Their systematized analysis found that there is “extensive use of intellectual capital disclosure through websites” at Indonesian universities, especially “in internal capital, while the disclosure of external capital and human capital is still limited” (p. 217). The creation and sharing of intellectual capital is important for a healthy and functioning university, but there are also interests in not leaking advantage to others. Targeted and strategic revelations may attract “public and government fund(s)” (p. 231). That said, such revelations need to be accurate so as not to cause confusion. This study found that the more autonomy a unit has in controlling their web-facing side, the more web-based intellectual capital disclosure may occur (p. 228). They write: “…autonomy and size give positive impact toward web-based intellectual capital disclosure, while age and competitiveness give no significant effect to web-based intellectual capital disclosure” (p. 230).
Virtual Laboratories
Kapilan N. and Vidhya P.’s “Role of Virtual Laboratories in Teaching Learning Processes of India” (Ch. 14) takes on a long-standing challenge in higher education: to provide remote labs and simulated labs for hands-on learning in an effective way. In a country that turns out some of the most accomplished engineers globally, India has a vested interest in building the human capital in their populations. This work describes how the Ministry of Human Resource Department started establishing virtual labs in some higher educational institutions in-country to enable hands-on experiments beginning in 2009. They worked with various institutions and universities to offer virtual lab experiments “in various engineering branches such as mechanical engineering, computer science and engineering, chemical engineering, biotechnology engineering, electronics and communications, electrical engineering and civil engineering” (p. 240). Virtual labs (VLs) are seen to increase student engagement and academic performance, levels of critical thinking, and problem solving abilities, without the safety issues of conventional labs; they are more cost-effective and may be accessed “anytime and anywhere” in terms of the simulations (N & P, 2021, pp. 242 - 243) but not the remote labs. The researchers found some limitations in VL usage: “Faculty members may not be serious when students (are) performing experiments” (p. 245). There may be potential distractions in the learning. Simulation-types of experiments “will not give hands-on training,” and learners may not discover the experimental errors (p. 245). Those “remote triggered VLs” require advance booking and are limited by “the preparation of the specimen, loading and unloading of the specimens” (p. 246). This work does show the need for actual investment to build such virtual lab capabilities.
Figure 3. Virtual Bounce
Educational Technologies in Foreign Language Education
Varvara Lemonia Oikonomou and Paschalia Patsala’s “The Integration of Educational Technologies in Foreign Language Education: Teacher Practices and Attitudes in Greece” (Ch. 15) found that the integration of technology-based learning tools in the classroom was affected by various factors, including “teachers’ age, gender, level of confidence in using these tools, or any previous trainings they attended” (p. 253). This research is based on a self-administered web-based questionnaire. Various barriers to integrating technology in their teaching include “lack of time, lack of resources, lack of confidence,” time conflict between available training development sessions and the work schedule, a lack of professional development on educational technologies, “no reason,” “not interested,” and “other,” (in descending order) (p. 267).
Conclusion
Patricia Ordóñez de Pablos, Miltiadis D. Lytras, and Xi Zhang’s IT and the Development of Digital Skills and Competences in Education brings ICT learning to the fore in education and highlights its importance to competitive advantage at the individual to societal levels. This awareness may inform curriculum development for teachers and personal learning goals for students. The IT space is a complex one, and the learning really has to be accrued over time and with experience to persist and to be wielded creatively.
About the Author
Shalin Hai-Jew works as an instructional designer / researcher at Kansas State University. Her email is shalin@ksu.edu.
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