Towards the transition to blended and remote education, evaluating the levels of students’ digital competence and designing educational programs to advance them is of paramount importance. Existing validated digital competence scales usually ignore either important digital skills needed or new socio-technological innovations. This study proposes and validates a comprehensive digital competence scale for students in higher education. The suggested instrument includes skills of online learning and collaboration, social media, smart and mobile devices, safety, and data protection. The scale was evaluated on a sample of 156 undergraduate and postgraduate students just before and at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. The final scale is composed of 28 items and six digital competence components. The evaluation study revealed valid results in terms of model fit criteria, factor loadings, internal validity, and reliability. Individual factors like the students’ field of study, computer experience and age revealed significant associations to the scale components, while gender revealed no significant differences. The suggested scale can be useful to the design of new actions and policies towards remote education and the digital skills’ development of adult learners.

Teachers’ digital competence (DC) is an important condition for the effective application of technology in education. Although several DC tools have been designed, adjustments to digital education and pedagogical or professional components are still scarce. Therefore, this study aims at developing a new instrument for assessing teachers’ DC regarding their pedagogical and professional activities in the context of digital school and digital education. The study also examines the teachers’ total DC scores and explores the differences between teacher profiles on a sample of 845 teachers in primary and secondary education in Greece. The final instrument comprises 20 items allocated in six components: 1) Teaching preparation; 2) Teaching delivery & students’ support; 3) Teaching evaluation & revision; 4) Professional development; 5) School’s development; and 6) Innovating education. The PLS-SEM analysis indicated the validity and reliability of the model in respect to its factorial structure, internal consistency, convergence validity, and model fitness. The results revealed DC inefficiency among teachers in Greece. Primary school teachers reported significantly lower scores in Professional development and Teaching delivery & students support. Female teachers reported significantly lower scores in Innovating education and School's development, but they reported higher scores in Professional development. The contribution and practical implications are discussed in the paper.

The COVID-19 crisis revealed the necessity for teachers to have digital skills in order to effectively teach online. Teachers should be able to exploit, use, and apply digital technologies in all educational activities. This paper investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding their digital skills for performing their teaching and professional responsibilities during the pandemic. More than eight hundred teachers participated in a survey regarding the use of digital technologies in their teaching and their professional responsibilities. Indicative digital tools that can be used by digital competent teachers are also presented to cover all areas of the teachers’ professional activities. Their answers revealed that they mostly used digital tools for finding, evaluating, and developing educational resources as well for teaching. They also used digital tools for self-study, students’ assessment, as well as interacting and communicating with students. However, they hardly used digital tools for other teaching activities such as feedback and final evaluation of the students, or revising the educational resources. Finally, they could not deal with long-term planning, management, and development of either their school or education in general. Although it is important for teachers to effectively respond to their daily emergent teaching responsibilities, consideration should also be given to the long-term planning and development of the digital school and digital education in general.