Digital Competency and University Curricula. In Search of the Missing Link

Abstract

This article presents some results of the research project entitled University and Knowledge Society: The Place of ICTs in Curricular Determination Processes. Funded by AECID and conducted in the context of the UNISIC network, the five-year study investigates teaching changes that are emerging in Ibero-American universities as a result of the demands of society today.

The following levels of a series of documents and in-depth interviews were analysed: general policy, the institution, curricula and subject programmes.

The specific results presented here concern the approach taken to digital competency in curricula of the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Santiago de Compostela. In new degrees, this approach may be considered as an indicator of the way in which universities are facing up to the challenge of training new professionals that knowledge economies need.

The analysis reveals discrepancies in the attention paid to generic competencies that are representative of the demands of the knowledge society, and that little attention is paid to digital competency.