Attitudes to digital transformations in education among university teachers

Abstract

The study focuses on the attitudes towards digital transformations in education among university teachers. It is difficult to imagine a modern university teacher without basic digital literacy. However, teachers have ambivalent attitudes to the active introduction of information technology in the educational process. On the one hand, information technology provides better solutions for teaching — e.g., it allows prompt transfer of learning material to students and automatic checking of test results. On the other hand, many teachers report difficulties in mastering new applications and resources — these difficulties are caused, among other things, by the teachers’ lack of first-hand digital experience. The study involved teachers of higher education institutions in Saint Petersburg (N=73; age from 25 to 74 years) holding various job positions from assistant to researcher fellow, with 83% of the participants having over 10 years of teaching experience. We used our own self-designed questionnaire to identify the attitudes to digital transformations in education: the questionnaire includes questions related to sociodemographic information about the participants and to the participants’ self-assessment of their own digital literacy and readiness to support digital transformations in higher education. Based on the results, we summarized the university teachers’ experience of using digital technologies in their work. We also identified the main difficulties faced by the university teachers in the process of introducing digital technologies into the educational process. The article analyzes the university teachers’ attitude to digital transformations in education and describes the teachers’ readiness to improve their own digital competencies and teach digital skills to students. The future of modern higher education is inextricably linked with digital technologies. Their active use will allow a teacher to excel in teaching and build a career.