An Empirical Study of Students and Teaching Staff's Digital Competence in Western China

Abstract

The society in the digital age is constantly evolving and advancing. At the same time, the emergence of new media, combined with a sea of access to information has also led to changes not only in our daily life but also in education and educational system. Information and communications technology (ICT) tools have already played an important role in our lives. In the aspect of education, we cannot ignore their influences and new challenges they have brought. Amid constantly-changing digital environment that contains the new conditions of interaction technologies, technological tools, digitization, informationalization and multimodality, the traditional literacy becomes outdated and thus the digital competence has become an important factor when people integrate into the contemporary society, helping them adapt to the modern trends and improve their competitiveness. The main objectives of this doctoral thesis are to investigate the actual status about digital competence of university students and teachers in China, especially western China, create their own digital competence profile.