Researchers at the University of Vienna are investigating how learning is changing as a result of the pandemic and what skills are needed.
What are actually digital skills? A current research project at the University of Vienna is investigating this question. “That’s a lot harder to pinpoint than it looks,” he says Christian KorunkaProfessor at the Faculty of Psychology in conversation with futurezone. “It’s not enough just to do handicrafts like one computer driver’s license fasten,” says Korunka.
“Tablets in schools are a good starting point, but they are not enough. You also have to learn how to deal with it competently,” says the psychologist. But there is more to this than simply knowing how to operate a program. But this area is “very much in flux”. “This is not the case with other areas of competence. Languages, for example, are something stable. You can use the language level to determine how proficient a person is,” says the university professor.
ChatGPT “don’t trust every question”
When it comes to digital skills, it is not enough just to operate a program, but ultimately you should also know how a computer program is created in the first place, or in which language and by which community it was programmed. But the “social handling” of digital media is also a skill that you have to learn first. “What medium do you use to communicate with each other and with what tone? This is by E-Mail different than in one video conference‘ explains Korunka.
Also recognizing Fake News is an important digital skill, according to the psychologist. For example, you have to learn that you can use the chat program ChatGPT, which is on everyone’s lips right now, “can’t trust every answer,” says Korunka. “For example, the program invents scientific quotations and has no position of its own. Understanding and classifying that is also something we have to learn,” says Korunka. This knowledge is also subject to “constant change,” says Korkunka. “Three years ago, none of us knew about zoom, then the pandemic came and we had to communicate in a new digital form.”
Social scissors during pandemic
Keyword pandemic: The Psychology Dean the University of Vienna, Barbara Schoberresearched in the course of the corona pandemic with her team led by Julia Holzer in a large-scale WWTF-sponsored study to “Learning under Covid-19“, how students felt, who suddenly found themselves in “distance learning” from one day to the next. “We have seen that a social gap has opened up. Students who had little support faced many more challenges than those whose parents had the opportunity to help, or who had access to their own digital devices and were already able to use them,” says Schober.
“Digital skills also played a major role here. Those who didn’t have their own laptop or smartphone, or those who didn’t know how to communicate digitally with their friends were at a disadvantage,” says Schober. “We should pay close attention to what measures need to be taken now to improve fairness of opportunity and prevent further losses of competence,” says Schober.
Hybrid learning as an opportunity for the future
According to the dean, students tended to be worse off the longer the pandemic lasted, and younger students in particular tended to be better off. “This can be explained, among other things, by the fact that younger children often still have their parents as their primary caregivers, while older children and students missed contact with others in their age group more,” says Schober. In addition, the schools were open again much faster than the universities.
The hybrid learning, which arose during the pandemic, was challenging, but also an opportunity, says Schober. “We had the opportunity to live learning contexts differently, and fixed structures were softened. This gives us the opportunity to learn from it, for example when does it make sense to conduct lessons on site and when is a digital lecture sufficient?”
The research results of the WWTF project can be found at “learnundercovid19.univie.ac.at” be viewed. Overall, the sample was partly 19,000 students. “In general, we need a lot more research on how students and teachers are doing, how digital learning affects those affected,” demands the Dean of Psychology at the University of Vienna.
Disclaimer: This article was created as part of a cooperation with the WWTF.
