ESL LECTURERS’ DIGITAL COMPETENCE IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

  • Sidra Naim et al.

Abstract

The teaching profession is facing rapidly changing demands, which require a new, broader and more
sophisticated set of competences than before. As a matter of fact, the incorporation of digital technologies in education has transformed the teaching practice which realizes the concept of digital learning.
The fact that teaching with digital tools in the language classrooms increases the impact of learning,
have been highlighted by various previous studies. However, to date, no study delved explicitly into the
notion to evaluate the different factors that affect the digital competence among the English as Secondary Language (ESL) lecturers. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to examine the relationship of
ESL lecturers’ digital competence towards their basic digital skills, didactic ICT-competence, learning
strategies and digital Bildung. The study used quantitative approach in order to obtain the data including questionnaires distributed to 233 ESL lecturers. The data collected was analyzed using description means and regression via SPSS 23 statistical analysis. The result revealed that the lecturers
reflect a good level of basic digital skills, didactic ICT-competence, learning strategies and digital
Bildung. All the domains showed significant positive and strong correlations with lecturers’ digital
competence while lecturers’ didactic ICT-competence showed the strongest relationship with overall
lecturers’ digital competence (r=0.787, p=0.000. The findings are expected to promote the quality of
digital skills among ESL lecturers in Malaysian Higher Institutions. In addition, this study contributes
to the growing body of knowledge on ESL lecturers’ digital competence.

Published
2020-04-13