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.

The integration of augmented reality (AR) in education is promising since it enhances teaching and offers more engaging and appealing learning experiences. Teachers can have a catalytic role towards the adoption of AR in education; therefore, their perspectives with regard to AR in teaching and learning are very important. The current study explores teachers’ views on the integration of AR in education through an open-ended questionnaire that has been answered by 93 educators worldwide. A set of digital skills that can support student-centered pedagogies in an appropriate infrastructure are the main requirement for effective teaching with AR. Among the perceived benefits and opportunities are interactive teaching and learning, increased interest and engagement, better understanding of complex concepts. As barriers, participants reported the lack of AR educational applications, the cost of buying and maintaining AR equipment and resources, the lack of teachers’ and students’ digital skills, classroom management issues, and security and ethical issues. Moreover, survey participants highlighted the need for raising teachers’ awareness for the added value of AR in education and the need for teachers’ continuous professional development. Implications and future research recommendations on the integration of AR in education are discussed.

The literature provides rich evidence on students’ levels of digital skills as well as on their frequency of Internet and social media use. Several studies have examined the relationships between social media use and academic achievement. However, there are not any studies investigating the relationships between social media use and digital skills of higher education students. To fill this research gap, this study examines the links between the frequency of social media use and students’ digital skills. The survey was conducted with 155 university students in Greece. The instrument on six digital skills components was evaluated in terms of reliability and consistency. The research findings reveal a strong positive association between the use of YouTube and students’ digital skills on content evaluation and protection. Age and educational level differences were noted in several digital skills components, whereas age and gender were related to the frequency of Instagram use. The main conclusion is that the generic use of Facebook and Instagram does not affect students’ digital skills. However, combined literature evidence implies that when social media are used for educational purposes, they might influence students’ perceived levels of digital skills. Implications and limitations are discussed in the study.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is forcing a dramatic transformation of the methods by which we acquire knowledge and engage in collaborative learning. Although there are several studies on how AI can support collaborative learning, there are no published studies examining how students can actually collaborate among themselves while interacting with AI tools. For this study, thirty postgraduate students were organized into teams of three, and each team developed a project mainly exploiting responses from ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and MS Copilot, as well as the internet and class resources. Each team selected a specific internet of things (IoT) application area and described the technologies and real-world cases in this area. Then, each team delivered a report with the full description of their project and their interactions with these generative AI (GenAI) tools and presented their work in class. Additionally, students answered an online questionnaire with closed- and open-ended questions and participated in focus group discussions. Members of each team collaborated to design prompts using five suggested modes of collaboration. Eventually, half of the students exploited all five collaborative modes, but they mostly liked and preferred three of these collaborative modes. On average, teammates initially disagreed 24% of the time but eventually reached an agreement. Students appreciated GenAI tools for their quick and well-structured responses, natural communication style, broad subject coverage, as well as their ability to simplify complex topics and support personalized learning. However, they expressed concerns about GenAI tools’ inaccurate and inconsistent responses and identified key risks, such as passive learning, over-dependence, outdated information, and privacy issues. Finally, students recommended that GenAI tools should provide a shared and well-organized discussion space for collaborative prompt asking, allowing all team members to simultaneously view each other’s prompts and the tool’s responses. They also advised source verification and proper training to ensure these tools remain supplementary rather than primary learning resources.