This study analysed the digital competence of 1,073 students at one Italian and two Spanish universities using the COBADI 2.0 (Basic Digital Competences/Registered Trademark 2970648) questionnaire. A quantitative methodology was applied to university students’ use of, and competence in, three areas of DigCom 2.1: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, and digital content creation. The results showed that these future graduates had an upper intermediate level of competence in information and digital literacy, and communication and collaboration, but a lower intermediate level in terms of digital content creation, particularly in the creation and dissemination of multimedia content using different tools. Two student profiles were identified for time spent online: those who dedicated a lot of their time to gaming or interacting on social media, and those who used most of their online time to searching for information and completing academic work.

The use of the Internet to develop new technologies has generated a considerable change in teaching and student learning in higher education. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has forced universities to switch from face-to-face to online instruction. Furthermore, this transfer process was planned and executed quickly, with urgent redesigns of courses originally conceived for live teaching. The aim of this work is to measure the service quality of online teaching delivered during the COVID-19 period. The methodology was based on an importance-performance analysis using a structural equations model. The data were obtained from a sample of 467 students attending a university in southern Spain. The results reveal five priority attributes of online teaching that need to be improved in order to enhance the service quality of the virtual instruction provided to students. Universities need to redefine their online format by integrating methodological and technological decisions and involving collaboration between teachers, students and administration staff and services. The results do not apply to educational institutions that exclusively teach courses online, but to those institutions that had to rapidly adapt, and shift course material originally designed for face-to-face training.