The digital silver lining of the pandemic: The impact on preservice teachers' technological knowledge and beliefs.

COVID-19 drastically disrupted teaching and learning worldwide and across all educational levels. Technology took on a central role in redefining education under these exceptional circumstances and frequently revealed challenges related to both infrastructure and to teachers' and learners' technological skills and readiness. This study aimed to investigate whether the experience of emergency remote education significantly impacted preservice teachers' knowledge and beliefs for their future teaching with technology. We investigated three cohorts of preservice teachers (pre-lockdown, n = 179; during lockdown, n = 48; post-lockdown, n = 228) and explored differences in their self-reported technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and their technological beliefs. Findings showed positive effects in the post-lockdown cohort, reflected in higher levels of technological knowledge (TK) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) compared to the pre-lockdown cohort. In addition, unique positive effects on content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) were found in the post-lockdown cohort among preservice teachers with prior teaching experiences. No effects of either cohort or experience emerged for preservice teachers' technological beliefs. These findings indicate that, despite the challenges related to COVID-19 lockdowns, preservice teachers not only appear to have maintained positive beliefs towards technology but may have even been able to draw benefits from the experience of lockdown. These findings and the positive effects associated with teaching experience are discussed with regard to their implication for teacher education.

Higher education teachers' digital competencies for a blended future.

Welcome to this special issue, focussing on teachers' digital competencies in Higher Education. The articles in this special issue explore the question of how digital competencies in higher education are conceptualized after the Great Online Transition, during and after the pandemic. A few of the topics addressed in the special issue are: new competency frameworks, the issue of disciplines and artificial intelligence and looks into the future of higher education learning and teaching. In this preface to the special issue, we first present a brief introduction to the context and the problem statement. We then provide a summary of each of the ten papers included in this special issue, we present how they are related and how each article makes a unique contribution to the main goal of the special issue. Finally, the implications are discussed together with suggestions for future research.

The HeDiCom framework: Higher Education teachers' digital competencies for the future.

There is little consensus about the nature of teachers' digital competencies in Higher Education. Moreover, existing digital competence frameworks have largely been developed for teachers in secondary education. In response to this, the current study focuses on developing and validating a framework of digital competencies for teachers in Higher Education. First, a review was conducted to determine the state of digital competence research regarding dimensions and definition of digital competence. In a next step, similarities and differences between existing digital competence frameworks were identified. Based on the outcomes of the review and the framework comparison, a framework was developed in an iterative process through expert meetings with policy makers, experts in the field of educational technology, and validated with practitioners. The new framework includes four dimensions of teachers' digital competencies: (1) Teaching practice, (2) Empowering students for a digital society, (3) Teachers' digital literacy, and (4) Teachers' professional development. The resulting Higher Education Digital Competence (HeDiCom) framework will provide guidance and clearer expectations of teachers' digital competency. Ultimately, improving teachers' digital competencies will contribute to improving the quality of digital competencies of the students.

Evaluating professional development for blended learning in higher education: a synthesis of qualitative evidence.

Successful implementation of blended learning initiatives requires careful planning and consideration of multidimensional factors. Focusing on evaluation and accountability for the design of professional development initiatives (PDIs) is the next step towards creating efficient and effective PDIs. This is especially needed since the Covid-19 pandemic has seen a dramatic shift towards using, and training for integration of digital teaching tools in higher education. The purpose of this qualitative research is to synthesize how professional development initiatives for blended learning in higher education institutions can be evaluated. Following a systematic review of the literature, fourteen empirical research articles were withheld and analyzed qualitatively using an inductive coding framework inspired by the 5 levels of evaluation by ( Guskey, T. R. (2000). Evaluating professional development. Corwin Press.). The results show that evaluation can be organized into five categories which correspond to the five evaluative levels for professional development by Guskey. The study concludes with recommendations and approaches for each evaluation category with a particular focus on higher education contextual challenges.