Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future

Foreign Language Teachers

Tetiana V. Konovalenko

1 a

, Yuliia A. Nadolska

1 b

, Olga Yu. Serdiuk

2 c

Tamara B. Poyasok

3 d

and Andrii M. Striuk

4 e

Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University, 20 Hetmanska Str., Melitopol, 72300, Ukraine

Kryvyi Rih National University, 11 Vitalii Matusevych Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50027, Ukraine

Kremenchuk Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University, 20 Pershotravneva Str., Kremenchuk, 39600, Ukraine

Kryvyi Rih National University, 11 Vitalii Matusevych Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50027, Ukraine

Keywords:

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills, Educational Programmes, Educational Components, Future Foreign Lan-

guage Teachers, Action Research, Comparative Analysis.

Abstract:

The aims of this paper are to share the results of the action research of the future foreign language teachers’

digital and ICT literacy skills development and to demonstrate the opportunities for their development while

pre-service teacher training process with the focus on the courses of Methodology of foreign language teaching

and Practical course of foreign language as well as other positive practices. The authors present the results of

comparative analysis of Ukrainian and American educational programmes for future foreign language teachers

as for their opportunities to develop their digital and ICT literacy skills. The article discusses the digital and

ICT literacy skills use in learning and teaching as an important component of future teachers’ training and a

contribution to the university education quality and the employability of university graduates. The projects

which inﬂuenced the action research elaborating are described. The results of three surveys are presented.

The post-action-research stage is described as the one inﬂuenced with students’ and teachers’ participation in

projects alongside with the extremely increased use of ICT in the conditions of the pandemic.

1 INTRODUCTION

The profession of a teacher is full of challenges and

unpredictable situations. In spite of the teacher’s spe-

cialisation there is a set of skills and competences

equally important for high quality teaching and learn-

ing. Experienced teachers mostly get used to any un-

expected circumstances in professional environment.

However, the year of 2020, shortly characterised as

the triumph of pandemic, made them facing quite new

challenge – online teaching (Tkachuk et al., 2021).

Under those conditions novice teachers seemed to

feel more conﬁdent as being the so-called “digital na-

tives”, while their ability to build rapport in digital en-

vironment did not quite correlate with today’s learn-

ers’ demands.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4867-324X

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9519-8846

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0505-0800

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2818-6524

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9240-1976

While the students obtain their higher pedagogi-

cal education, the reality changes and they take risk

to acquire the out-of-date model of professional com-

petence and strategy of teaching. It is a challenge

to ﬁnd the way out of this situation. Future teachers

can and should be taught to develop their own profes-

sional thinking, awareness and skills and constantly

be in their continuing professional development.

In the Decree of the President of Ukraine “On the

Aims of Sustainable Development of Ukraine within

the Period till 2030”, it is pointed that to promote the

national interests of our country, the diverse and equi-

table quality education and opportunities for life-long

learning should be provided for all Ukrainian people

(President of Ukraine, 2019).

Digital and ICT literacy skills are among the most

important 21st century skills without which the mod-

ern teacher will not be able to provide effective teach-

ing and cater for students’ learning under the condi-

tions of continuing innovation and modernisation of

education irrespectively of its level (pre-school, pri-

Konovalenko, T., Nadolska, Y., Serdiuk, O., Poyasok, T. and Str iuk, A.

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future Foreign Language Teachers.

DOI: 10.5220/0010930600003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 253-263

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

253

mary, secondary, high school, vocational, pre-higher

and higher education) or type (formal, informal).

They are especially important for the employability of

university graduates and their successful professional

activity.

Almost 20 years ago, in a planning guide pre-

sented with UNESCO it was stated that “with the

emerging new technologies, the teaching profession

is evolving from an emphasis on teacher-centred,

lecture-based instruction to student-centred, interac-

tive learning environments. Designing and imple-

menting successful ICT-enabled teacher education

programmes is the key to fundamental, wide-ranging

educational reforms” (Khvilon and Patru, 2002). In

this direction UNESCO continues its contribution to

society’s digital and ICT literacy skills development.

Compared to the UNESCO document of 2002, in

2016 the terminology such as ‘the ICT competen-

cies’ changed to ‘digital and ICT literacy skills’. In

“EU commission (Skills panorama)” the term “digi-

tal competences” or “ICT Skills/digital competences”

involves “conﬁdent and critical use of information so-

ciety technology (ICT) in the general population and

provide the necessary context (i.e. the knowledge,

skills and attitudes) for working, living and learning

in the knowledge society. Digital competences are de-

ﬁned as the ability to access digital media and ICT,

to understand and critically evaluate different aspects

of digital media and media contents and to commu-

nicate effectively in a variety of ICT inﬂuenced con-

texts” (Law et al., 2018). Thus, we can watch how

the rapid development of digital technologies inﬂu-

ences the essence of relevant skills and competences

and promotes innovations in the system of higher ed-

ucation.

Daily digital discoveries and inventions, com-

bined with the necessity of education adaptation to

pandemic conditions, promoted blended and distance

learning/teaching, favoured to learners’ and teachers’

deep diving into digital reality. The educational in-

stitutions of all levels developed their own strategies

of making education accessible to their learners. In

higher pedagogical education it is important to de-

velop the strategies of effective university learning /

teaching under the new conditions as well as training

future teachers for being ready to act professionally

in a changeable pedagogical environment, containing

unpredictable or force-major situations.

The aims of this paper are to study the opportu-

nities for digital and ICT literacy skills development

while pre-service teacher training. The focus is on the

experience of Ukrainian universities and their educa-

tional programmes for future foreign language teach-

ers.

2 METHODS

The methodology of our research is presented with

the procedure of action research.

The action research contained several stages ac-

cording to the procedure of Chen (Chen, 2015):

• identifying problem of meaning (starting point,

kick off, notice, ﬁnd interesting area, etc.);

• developing questions and examine assumptions

(reﬂect and formulate questions);

• planning (choosing enquiry strategies, ways of

gathering data, planning interventions);

• taking action (intervening);

• gathering data (wider evidence);

• analysing data (reﬂecting on wider evidence,

qualitative analysis);

• interpreting data (assessing impact on teaching

and learning);

• reporting (formulating recommendations);

• taking action (wider scale intervention).

Besides of the mentioned above stages and their

speciﬁcations we added comparative analysis of the

data and before taking an action we planned imple-

menting new elements into educational process. Af-

ter having taken the action we compared the expected

programme results formation with the previous ones.

The issues of future foreign language teachers’

pre-service training are rather well-studied, though

there still are the aspects which have not been paid

enough attention. Such an issue is the one associated

with skills of handling with information and commu-

nication technologies. So, we have studied Ukrainian

and foreign experience of the future foreign language

teachers’ digital and ICT literacy skills development.

The next stage of our research was the study which

helped us to collect the data about Ukrainian and for-

eign university educational programmes for bachelors

and identifying their potential as for digital and ICT

literacy skills formation.

This study was aimed at answering the research

question:

1. What are the programme opportunities for the for-

mation of students’ digital and ICT literacy skills?

2. How do these components contribute to future

teachers’ digital and ICT literacy skills develop-

ment?

3. What are the most effective ways to train digitally

and ICT aware teacher of foreign language?

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

254

Our analysis comprised the analysis of all com-

ponents of educational programmes giving the nec-

essary information and qualitative data of the com-

petences to be developed and the expected results as

well as educational components contributing to their

achievement. Ukrainian and American programmes

were compared with the educational programme for

future teachers of English implemented in Bogdan

Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical University.

The stage of interpreting data was realised by

means of assessing impact of the educational pro-

gramme content on teaching and learning. It was

studied as the dynamic system of educational com-

ponents, extracurricular activities, continuing process

of amending and renovation of the content, methods,

forms, means, modes and approaches to teaching and

learning. The results of the tailor-made course “Infor-

mation and Communication Technologies in Learn-

ing and Teaching” implementing were analysed to-

gether with other components of the educational pro-

gramme. This course was especially valuable as a

part of the course “Methodology of English Language

Teaching”, which proved to have the effective com-

bination of content, modes of interaction, motivation

and outcomes.

Taking action, in this case is sharing the results

of all the previous stages of our action research as

the positive practice of creating the student-centred

educational environment with the focus on develop-

ment of future teachers’ 21st century skills. To prove

that the educational programme under consideration

could really enhance the technologies impact in the

classroom taught by its graduates, we analysed and

interpreted the data gained from its content and from

responses of students, teachers and graduates about

learning and teaching within its functioning.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Each year university education becomes less acces-

sible as the requirements for the matriculation are

changing and becoming stricter. The quality of uni-

versity education is now under profound renovation

as, on the one hand, the Ministry of Science and Ed-

ucation emphasizes on high quality specialists’ train-

ing based on modern demands and world standards;

on the other hand, the National Agency for Higher

Education Quality Assurance crucially has changed

the procedure of accreditation of educational pro-

grammes and subsequently the criteria for their eval-

uation. Besides of quite reasonable and expected con-

ditions for continuing change of higher education,

there is one more unpredictable and sudden factor

challenging its functioning such as the pandemic.

Nowadays most of educational programmes in

Ukraine are renovated annually. The head of educa-

tional programme together with its staff have to anal-

yse all stakeholders’ needs and improve it in accor-

dance with them. The authors of the article while be-

ing the heads of educational programmes for future

teachers of foreign languages have decided to study

the opportunities for digital and ICT literacy skills de-

velopment while pre-service teacher training within

their educational programmes. The comparative anal-

ysis with the focus on the experience of Ukrainian and

foreign universities and their educational programmes

has been realized.

It goes without saying that the study of existing

experience and positive practices was based not on

the educational programmes content only, but also on

its dissemination in scientiﬁc and methodological re-

sources. During our work with relevant researches we

have discovered that in spite of the numerous works

revealing the importance of digital and ICT literacy

skills for any teacher, great advantages of ICT used

in the process of learning and teaching foreign lan-

guages, the issue of digital and ICT literacy skills de-

velopment as one of the key components in future for-

eign language teachers training have not been thor-

oughly investigated yet.

Diving into the topic of our study it would be rel-

evant to mention Gavin Dudeney’s recollections of

his being a student in 1970s-1980s and understand-

ing of literacy and numeracy as the ‘three Rs’ (read-

ing, (w)riting and (a)rithmetic). He states that “times

have changed, and the notion of ‘literacy’ in the wired

world of 2014 is a completely different beast” (Du-

deney, 2016). The researcher with co-authors Nicky

Hockly and Mark Pegrum have created a taxonomy

of the new digital literacies “by breaking them down

into four main areas: those with a focus on language,

on connections, on information, and on (re)design”

(Dudeney, 2016). A focus on language is speciﬁed

with print and texting literacies, mobile, gaming, hy-

pertext, code; a focus on connections – with personal,

participatory, network and intercultural literacies; a

focus on information – with search, information and

tagging literacies; a focus on (re)design is associated

with remix literacy. Speaking about incorporating a

focus on both digital literacy and 21st century skills

into a language class, Dudeney (Dudeney, 2018) em-

phasises ensuring the learners acquire an integrated

level of proﬁciency with technology, digital literacy

and 21st century skills, which should be of beneﬁt

both in further study, and in professional contexts.

Houcine (Houcine, 2011) presented a “language

training centre” in an Algerian university where ICTs

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future Foreign Language Teachers

255

are an integral part of the teaching practices and de-

scribed its positive effect on learning and teaching for-

eign languages with such beneﬁts:

• students develop better listening skills due to reg-

ular exposure to audio materials (audio and video

recordings – authentic and software, podcasts,

pronunciation software);

• selection of updated articles from the Internet con-

tributes to learners’ awareness of the language

(grammar skills, coherence in committing ideas,

syntax...) and of the speciﬁc scientiﬁc edit-

ing/presentation (scientiﬁc texts, reports);

• teachers reported on their learners being engaged,

motivated and attentive;

• ICT impacted positively on students’ proﬁciency.

A majority of students got better scores in their

ﬁelds after attending language courses at the

MLC;

• students increased their ability to take notes ef-

fectively; i.e., they were more likely to listen to

the teacher and grasp the message, select the ap-

propriate information and take notes that will be

further exploited;

• the enhancement of linguistic competence com-

bined with motivation and challenge led to more

autonomy and initiative (to do research on the

Web, to propose links, to use online dictionaries

and encyclopaedias).

The research presented by Hadef (Hadef, 2020)

describes the survey conducted in the department of

foreign languages with 30 students whose age ranges

between 18–22 years old and 4 university teachers

to assess the application of ICTs in the teaching and

learning process. Students’ and teachers’ attitudes to

ICTs application were studied and the following rec-

ommendations articulated: “University/school have

to prepare to a digital society; develop a policy based

on its own vision; make use of more digital tools; pro-

vide sufﬁcient material; provide an academic training

for teachers on how to use ICT’s in teaching; prepare

an equipped rooms; use video Conferences to present

lectures” (Hadef, 2020).

One of the most relevant studies of the issue is re-

vealed by Guill

en-G

amez et al. (Guill

en-G

amez et al.,

2019) whose work has demonstrated that “future for-

eign language teachers have a medium-low develop-

ment of pedagogical digital competence. The result of

this is that technologies are still not being used today

for pedagogical purposes. The lack of pedagogical

use may be due to the fact that the teaching staff do

not have a solid initial pedagogical training with re-

gard to the development of digital competence, which

implies their limited use of ICT, as well as their ten-

dency to only use the best known tools on the market”

(Guill

en-G

amez et al., 2019). The researchers discov-

ered that future teachers have an adequate motivation

to use ICT, though there is still a lack of pedagogi-

cal consistency in their use, so they recommend edu-

cational institutions to motivate teachers by revealing

beneﬁts of using ICT.

Sevcikova (Sevcikova, 2016) explored her stu-

dents’ responses to digital technology and its prac-

tical use for teaching purposes while TEFL training.

Her action research took place in Saudi Arabia. The

teacher-researcher discovered that her students be-

lieved that “technology is essential for the future; it

enhances learning and teaching, supports collabora-

tion and motivation. They also pointed out some lim-

itations such as IT literacy, the time-consuming nature

of technology, and the lack of access to free internet

learning/teaching resources” (Sevcikova, 2016).

It’s crucial that there are specially designed

courses for practising classroom teachers which can

be used for future teachers. Such course is presented

with Nik Peachey – the Blended Learning in ELT

course. It is aimed at “developing teachers’ under-

standing of the potential of blended learning for the

development of English language skills” (Tomlinson

and Whittaker, 2013). In spite of the fact that this

course is tutored online the researcher’s recommen-

dations are of great use while improving university

educational programmes for future teachers.

One more practical and useful research has been

elaborated by Courts and Tucker (Courts and Tucker,

2012) as they suggest multimedia items that can be

easily implemented in the college classroom such as

animation, slideshows, blogging, instant messaging,

podcasting, and video on demand. The researchers

state: “As new technologies emerge, both students

and educators are often eager to ﬁnd methods of as-

similating these technologies in their college class-

room experience” (Courts and Tucker, 2012). Inte-

grating multimedia in the classroom can allow stu-

dents to apply real-world skills, learn effective collab-

oration techniques, learn creative ways of expressing

their ideas, and synthesize complex content (Shank,

2005). Though the research dates back to 2012 its re-

sults can be used and positively inﬂuence learning and

teaching in Ukraine even now.

Simultaneously with the analysis revealed in the-

oretical sources we paid our attention to the content

of educational programmes for future teachers of for-

eign languages in Ukraine and in the US. So, un-

der our consideration there were the educational pro-

grammes of Ball State University (USA), New York

University (USA), Miami University (USA), Stony

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

256

Brook University (USA), Izmail State University of

Humanities (Ukraine), Volodymyr Hnatiuk Ternopil

National Pedagogic University (Ukraine), Pavlo Ty-

chyna Uman State Pedagogic University (Ukraine),

Vasyl Stephanyk Pre-Carpathian National University

(Ukraine) and Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State

Pedagogical University (Ukraine).

The objects of our investigation within educa-

tional programmes were competences and results of

learning correlated with educational components as

for their potential for digital and ICT literacy skills

development.

We found out that there are essential differences

between Ukrainian and American programmes as the

approaches to developing the programmes content

differ. In Ukraine the focus is usually on the ICT

issues closely related to core subjects, i.e. to Peda-

gogy and Methodology of foreign language teaching.

In American programmes besides of the same educa-

tional components there could be found much more

variety of subjects.

In Ukrainian programmes the expected results

are associated with the creation of educational-

methodological means and equipment and applica-

tion; search, systematising, analysis and check of the

information; creation of educational environment.

American programmes for future teachers of for-

eign languages contain components which help them

to master technological approaches and meet the chal-

lenge of integrating technology with the teaching of

foreign languages as well as allow them to get much

deeper knowledge of ICT and dive into the digi-

tal world. There are such subjects as Introduction

to Business with Integrated Computer Applications,

Computer Apps for Design, Computer Applications

in Graphic Arts, Technical Design Graphics, Comput-

ers and Society, Learning and Teaching with Emerg-

ing Technologies, Software Engineering (service),

Space and Place in Human Communication, The In-

ternet and Contemporary Art, etc. As we can see,

there is no limitation associated with the future pro-

fessional skills necessary in foreign language class-

rooms only. Foreign language teachers can freely

choose the subjects which will signiﬁcantly broaden

their worldview and the system of competences.

The need for changes in the system of Ukrainian

higher education launched the projects aimed at its

modernisation and quality improvement. As Ukraine

tries to be in line with European and world standards,

international organisations help it to reform all levels

of educational system. Recently the reform of pre-

school education has just began, the UK Government

and British Good Governance Fund support it; New

Ukrainian School Concept is based on (ec.europa.eu,

2018); Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland sup-

ports this reform ﬁnancially; The Lego Foundation

contributes to the development of Ukrainian primary

school.

As for higher education it is actively supported

with the British Council and the British Embassy,

America House, IREX and the US Embassy, Goethe-

Institute and the Germany Embassy. For the last ﬁve

years the most crucial in the sphere of teacher train-

ing were two projects implemented by British Council

and Goethe-Institute.

Goethe-Institute project “Deutsch Lehren Lernen”

(www.goethe.de, 2019) presents a series of continu-

ing programme of learning based on innovative di-

dactic approach of action research and corresponds to

the world quality standards of teacher training. The

project system comprises the integration of method-

ology of language teaching and foreign language

learning as two inseparable components of a future

teacher’s professional competence.

“Deutsch Lehren Lernen” suggests the tasks on

systematic observation and reﬂection on pedagogical

activity by means of German language video-lessons

from three continents. As the follow-up activities, the

students can participate in one-week on-line course

moderated by mentors. On accomplishing the course

the students are to do the planning and elaborate their

own action research project.

The project activity is based on blended learning

and combines traditional language learning with dig-

ital learning, i.e. doing on-line tasks, new words and

patterns revision and use, virtual collaboration with

group-mates, virtual class learning, Adobe Connect

webinars for both students and teachers with the sys-

tem of completed tasks monitoring.

There are such effective learning tools as Page

Player-App, E-book, introductory on-line test (Ein-

stufungstest online), media-pack, help-test (Testhelf),

application for the work with vocabulary (Vokabel-

trainer - App), supplementary on-line materials, bilin-

gual glossary. The advantage of the project course is

obvious as it promotes and motivates students’ learn-

ing and helps teachers to deliver their teaching taking

into consideration all challenges of modern education

and information and communication technologies de-

velopment.

The project “New Generation School Teacher”

(www.britishcouncil.org.ua, 2019) was initiated by

British Council Ukraine and the Ministry of Educa-

tion and Science of Ukraine in 2013. It aimed at in-

troducing change to the initial teacher education sys-

tem in Ukraine. The project resulted with the PRE-

SETT curriculum in Methodology and the network of

Ukrainian universities implementing it and proving its

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future Foreign Language Teachers

257

effectiveness. The project outcomes were presented

with such learning ones as:

• student-teachers’ and newly-qualiﬁed teachers’

English proﬁciency is improved;

• their classroom skills and conﬁdence are en-

hanced;

• their digital and social media skills are developed.

On the level of action outcomes the newly-

qualiﬁed teachers:

• teach more effectively and conﬁdently;

• engage with colleagues;

• join networks and meet colleagues overseas;

• can integrate ICT in/outside the classroom;

• are committed to CPD.

As it can be seen the ICT skills were paid special

attention and there was designed a separate unit of

the new Methodology course “ICT in Learning and

Teaching”. Its objectives are to form the students’

awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of do-

ing activities on a computer and other electronic de-

vices as opposed to similar paper-based activities; the

criteria for evaluating and selecting online resources

for language teaching purposes; and to develop their

skills to use different software (e.g. Microsoft Word,

PowerPoint) for language learning and teaching pur-

poses; make use of social networking sites, blogs,

wikis, etc. in language teaching; evaluate the poten-

tial of online audio and video for language teaching

purposes; assess possible risks of using the Internet

with young learners and develop a set of rules for cy-

ber safety; explore current trends in mobile learning

and be able to use mobile phones for teaching and

learning reference.

The whole project represents the large-scale re-

search which comprised 8 university at its beginning,

and 13 universities and colleges within the period of

its piloting. Our small-scale research was based in

its results but was elaborated on the content prepared

and piloted in Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State

Pedagogical University only.

Besides of “New Generation School Teacher”

project results we used the experience of our partic-

ipation in the joint project of International Research

and Exchanges Board, Academy of Ukrainian Press

and Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

“Learn to Discern: Info-Media Literacy” as its re-

alisation is concerned around integrating info-media

focused modules or courses into pre-service teacher

training syllabus. In spite of the fact that the project

is mostly oriented at the training of teachers of

Ukrainian Language and Literature, History and Arts,

we have implemented its element in our courses for

future teachers of foreign languages.

The amended and modernised curricula of

Methodology of Foreign Language Teaching and

The First Foreign Language develop teacher proﬁle

specialty-based competences as well as critical think-

ing skills, implement interactive methods of learning

and teaching, dialogue modes of interaction, and the

ample use of online tools.

While identifying the issue for doing our ac-

tion research we studied the experience presented

in scientiﬁc-methodological resources and found out

the challenges and opportunities for our learning and

teaching context.

The role of information and communication tech-

nologies in higher education has been being studied

since the very beginning of their appearance and ap-

plication in this branch. The issue has its diachronic

and space aspects, i.e. in different periods we ob-

serve the studies of various technologies and the con-

text of national systems of education, types of educa-

tional institutions, technical and ﬁnancial capability,

and other numerous factors have an impact on the ICT

use and their role.

It is obviously that the ICT use in higher educa-

tion provides for both personal professional develop-

ment and the world’s information-digital-literate so-

ciety. Modern education should be available for all

people always and everywhere. That is why “life-

long learning has become the driving force to sustain

in the contemporary competitive environment. There-

fore to strengthen and / or advance this knowledge-

driven growth, new technologies, skills and capabili-

ties are needed” (Mondal and Mete, 2012).

The ﬁrst overview of the issue helped with the

starting point of our research and ﬁnding the relevant

area. Still we had to specify the narrow aspects for

elaborating and implementing. This was a cause for

doing the survey. Our respondents were university

students and school teachers. The questions asked

were about their attitude to the use of ICT in class,

their conﬁdence in this practice, and their skills in

handling with cyber well-being, websites and learn-

ing platforms choice, online resources use, social net-

working, blogs, wikis application, ﬂipped teaching,

proper use of various devices such as mobile phones,

tablets, laptops, interactive whiteboards. There were

200 students and 30 teachers who took part in the sur-

vey.

In 10 months we repeated the survey of the same

students and teachers. There were the crucial differ-

ences in educational environment between two sur-

veys as the pandemic inﬂuenced greatly the role of

ICT in classroom when each university teacher and

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

258

student faced the challenge of completely distance ed-

ucation. In our case, one more factor made its impact

on learning and teaching – it was participation in two

projects “Learn to Discern: Information and Media

Literacy” (continuing) and “Teaching Excellence Pro-

gramme” by British Council, Advance HE, Institute

of Higher Education NAES of Ukraine in partnership

with Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine

and National Agency for Higher Education Quality

Assurance in Ukraine (started in May, 2020), and par-

ticipation in the Training for Teachers by Progresylni

(August, 2020).

The project “Learn to Discern: Information and

Media Literacy” contributed to the development of

skills to work with information by means of various

online tools and resources. The team of teachers and

students of Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Ped-

agogical University won the grant for the creation of

the Hub of Infomedia-Literate Citizens. The team

consisted of people who took part in both surveys and

they surely demonstrated new results. Due to involv-

ing at least 300 people improved their handling with

information online and Zoom platform for education

and communication.

Application for participation in Teaching Excel-

lence Programme was based on creation of Hub for

Teaching Excellence Development. It has been re-

cently created (in November, 2020) and several work-

shops for university teachers were delivered. Two

of them were devoted to the use of ICT for student-

centred education. Sharing the experience of partic-

ipation in the Programme was of great value for the

development of digital and ICT literacy skills of both

teachers and students. The trainers from Advance

Education (Great Britain) Kathy Wright and Caro-

line Brennan combined such issues as inﬂuences on

learning, conceptions of learning, learning theories,

outcomes led teaching, planning for learning, making

teaching interactive, principles of assessment, types

of assessment, giving and receiving feedback, reﬂec-

tive practice, action research, interdisciplinary and

other issues with the advanced use of various modern

technologies, resources and tools (Edmodo, Socra-

tive, Thinglink, ClassDojo, Storybird, Animoto, Ka-

hoot!, Scretch, Quizlet, Trello, Edpuzzle, Jamboard,

TurnItIn, Canva, Schoology, AnswerGarden, Near-

pod, Flipgrid and many others).

Besides of demonstrating and explaining all those

technologies and resources, the trainers used the loop

input, involving participants into activities realised by

means of all those tools. Most of them were mul-

tifunctional and catered for achieving several educa-

tional purposes, while some of them helped to create

rapport and demonstrated good sense of trainers’ hu-

mour. Such simple use of Zoom as ﬁlters turned the

trainer into a master, then deer and later on helped to

create holiday frame. All those workshops-webinars

made participants discover numerous ICT uses for ed-

ucation promotion under any circumstances.

The ﬁrst survey allowed us to see the so-called

“digital divide” as only two of teachers (6.7%) an-

swered that they are completely conﬁdent as for ICT

use in classroom. Completely conﬁdent students were

49%. Though, the questions about cyber well-being,

websites and learning platforms choice, blogs and

wikis application, understanding of ﬂipped teaching

demonstrated that there were some gaps in their in-

formation literacy and digital safety skills.

For teachers who took part in our survey we pre-

pared a series of workshops to help them in ICT ap-

plication in foreign language classrooms.

For students, on the basis of our baseline study

we elaborated the unit “Information and Communica-

tion Technology (ICT) in Learning and Teaching En-

glish” (Goncharova and Konovalenko, 2019) which

was based on blended learning and included the fol-

lowing items:

• Modern learning technologies and their relevance

for the educational process.

• Cyber well-being: keeping children safe on the

Internet.

• Selecting and evaluating websites for teaching

and learning purposes.

• The use of learning platforms (e.g. Moodle) for

teaching purposes.

• Using online audio and video resources for lan-

guage learning and teaching purposes.

• Exploration of opportunities offered by social net-

working sites, blogs, wikis to language learning

and teaching.

• The notion of a ‘ﬂipped’ classroom and its bene-

ﬁts; traditional vs. ﬂipped teaching.

• The main uses of IWBs (interactive whiteboards).

and their beneﬁts as opposed to traditional white-

boards.

• Exploration of opportunities offered by mobile

devices (e.g. smartphone) in language learning.

• The use of different software and online tools for

teaching and learning purposes.

• Power Point making rules.

• Effective ways of information search, ﬁnding the

primary sources. Accumulating and generalising

the information.

• The notions of copyright and plagiarism. Follow-

ing the copyright. How to avoid plagiarism.

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future Foreign Language Teachers

259

• Teacher’s skills in photo, logo, symbols, posters,

emoticons, memes, infographics use.

There were no traditional lectures within deliver-

ing this unit. The main modes of interaction were

presented with games, jigsaw learning, buzz groups,

socratic technique, role play, workshop, simulation,

cross-over groups, guided reading, lecturette, brain-

storming, speaking corners and others. Of all method-

ology units this one was of the greatest interest for

students and positively inﬂuenced their motivation to

learning. It was conﬁrmed at each session which

ended with taking students’ feedback.

Each session began with studying the experience

on the topic of it. Starting where the students are

helped us to choose between possible variables and

contributed to making the unit content and methodol-

ogy of its deliverance more ﬂexible.

Here there are some examples of organising the

learning within the unit. In the session devoted to

cyber-well-being, after getting acquainted with its

principles, watching several videos and brainstorm-

ing all ideas about safe use of the Internet, the stu-

dents make a list of rules for communicating in the

world web. They work in groups and ﬁnd the exam-

ples to each rule from the Internet. Each group cre-

ates a document on a Google Drive and then works

with all lists created by other groups. They add other

suggestions or comment on other groups’ products.

After discussing the rules of netiquette, one student

takes a responsibility to make an accumulated neti-

quette code and shares it with all students.

One more example of work in teams is presented

with evaluating the sites. Before doing this evalua-

tion, the students learn the following criteria essence:

1. Audience

2. Credibility

3. Accuracy

4. Objectivity

5. Coverage

6. Currency

7. Aesthetic or visual appeal

8. Navigation

9. Accessibility

After that their teams work with different educa-

tional websites and evaluate the possibilities for their

use in the narrow context, i.e. they are informed on

the age of learners and their level of English.

When one team presents their ﬁndings the repre-

sentatives of other ones ask questions and give com-

ments. The activity is summarised with formulating

tips for the work with websites.

The work with online courses was a little more

time-consuming for students as they had to begin

some courses (according to their learning interests) on

various learning platforms such as https://futurelearn.

com or https://openlearning.com. After diving into

their courses and getting access to all platform tools,

students analysed the content management, curricu-

lum mapping and planning, ways of communication

and management of the platform. On the stage of dis-

cussing the platforms the students are asked to reﬂect

on their possible moderating such courses, strengths

and weaknesses of them.

The use of social networks in learning and teach-

ing arouse the most interest of students. This topic

was studied with simultaneous revision of keeping

children safe on the Internet. The students suggested

the ways of possible algorithms of social media use

for educational purposes. This way of ICT use was

studied in micro-teaching as students prepared 1-2

activities for their group-mates playing the roles of

school students. Through the prepared activities a

student-teacher taught English or German to his/her

school students. After each microteaching there was

a feedback session aimed at ﬁnding positive features

and methodological mistakes so that avoid them in

real classroom.

Especially valuable for students was the work with

wikis and blogs as they promote online writing which

is rather important for teachers-philologists. In this

case we asked students to create their own blogs.

They worked in small groups and had one task per

a group. To make use of the task they created the

blogs of newly-qualiﬁed teachers so that they could

use them while having their school experience (prac-

tice).

All above-mentioned examples were used in

methodology class, though sometimes we applied ac-

tivities of the same typology in our language classes.

We give just one example of a task in the class where

German is taught as the second foreign language.

So, the students got a set of QR-codes with the

help of which they had to ﬁnd the endings of the state-

ments beginnings of which were given. Then they had

to match parts of statements according to the logic ap-

proach

In practical language classes especially often were

used mobile phones applications as they helped to

work with vocabulary and grammar (visualising,

training, revision, test control), listening. Writing

skills were monitored on the level of messaging. Still

for larger pieces of writing we used standard e-mail

writing which helped students to learn to write vari-

ous types of letters. Before writing such letters they

searched the information necessary for that very kind

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

260

of a letter.

While gathering data on our action research we

looked for wider evidence of the unit effectiveness.

That is why the same survey was conducted for the

second time. It conﬁrmed that most of students (87%)

began to feel more conﬁdent as for ICT use in class.

Besides, they were acquainted with a wide range of

software, online tools, applications and other method-

ologically valuable ICT items. While speaking about

students completely conﬁdent with ICT we discov-

ered 67%. There were still a lot of students quite con-

ﬁdent with the use of Instagram or TikTok and very

unaware of how to use digital opportunities in their

future professional activity.

The ICT use in learning and teaching unit was a

very dynamic and useful for future teachers. Its im-

portance and relevance was conﬁrmed by students and

teachers. It is the call of the time to make the class-

room blended and to transfer a part of learning to

virtual reality which so important for “digital native”

school students. Besides, modern university students

are ready to implement the ICT innovations.

The students had a good opportunity to train in

using ICT in hands-on activities when they had their

school experience (practice). So, their reﬂective jour-

nals they wrote while practice contained the same

feedback as in the end of each methodology session:

the ICT is a powerful methodological tool and the fac-

tor which favours learning and teaching stay effective.

After the third survey we discovered that the sit-

uation changed to the better as 6 teachers grew con-

ﬁdent with ICT use in classroom (20%). They ex-

plained that fact with the need for vast ICT applica-

tion during the pandemic and the direct dependence of

their teaching on technological decisions. Participa-

tion in project events and workshops stimulated their

progress as well.

The students stated their progress as well. The

number of completely conﬁdent students grew up to

75%. The most frequent explanation for the progress

was the same as the teachers’ one – the emerging need

for ICT use as the only way for their learning. Stu-

dents shared their new experience as “up-scaling their

digital worldview”.

The comparative analysis of the contents of

Ukrainian and American educational programmes

demonstrated that the American ones give the stu-

dents much better possibilities for the development of

digital and ICT literacy skills, including both for their

future teaching foreign languages and more advanced

use. However, among Ukrainian programmes there

were several under our consideration which proved to

be rather progressive in this direction. They were the

programmes of Ternopil, Uman and Melitopol uni-

versities. These three programmes were greatly inﬂu-

enced with participation in the project “New Genera-

tion School Teacher”, so the educational components

for digital and ICT literacy skills of future teachers

of foreign languages appeared to be well represented.

While having such positive experience of speciﬁc pro-

fessional training there is the need for implementing

some educational components aimed at advanced ICT

use.

The application of ICT in both teacher training

and those teachers’ future professional activity can be

considered unlimited as the technology is rapidly de-

veloping and changing the world around us as well

as the educational opportunities. Virtual reality con-

tains the enormous potential for improving the quality

of learning and teaching foreign languages. This is-

sue have been studied Symonenko et al. (Symonenko

et al., 2020) who emphasized that “the practice of im-

mersion into virtual environment in foreign language

learning will enable students to feel themselves an

integral part of the professionally oriented situation

which is designed speciﬁcally to prepare the course

participants for communication within” (Symonenko

et al., 2020). Researchers point that virtual real-

ity tasks help students to get used to “psychologi-

cal challenges and apply existing speaking skills in

a foreign language”, “encourage spontaneity” and in-

creases students’ motivation to “achieve better results

in a training course” (Symonenko et al., 2020). Vir-

tual reality is especially valuable for teaching lan-

guages in the conditions of natural language speech

environment. Besides of demonstrating “situational

models of possible daily life circumstances for for-

eign language communication” (Symonenko et al.,

2020), virtual reality based tasks surely promote the

development of future teachers’ information literacy

and digital skills.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The results of our action research and the compara-

tive analysis of American and Ukrainian educational

programmes helped us to prove the importance of the

future foreign language teachers’ information literacy

and digital safety skills development to our students

and teachers. The prepared materials, chosen ways

of teaching, possibility to apply all they got to know

demonstrated to future teachers the opportunities for

their development while pre-service teacher training

process.

The elaborated unit implementing contributed to

the development of future teachers’ awareness of the

advantages and disadvantages of ICT use in the class-

Digital and ICT Literacy Skills as One of the Key Competences of Future Foreign Language Teachers

261

room, the criteria for evaluating and selecting on-

line resources and ICT software and applications for

language teaching purposes, skills of using various

software, social networking sites, blogs, wikis, on-

line tools in language teaching, evaluating the poten-

tial of online audio, video and other visuals, assess-

ing possible risks of using the Internet with learners

and creating conditions for cyber safety, using various

electronic devices justiﬁed for achieving educational

aims.

Their methodology and language classes supplied

future teachers with the set of professionally valuable

awareness and skills which will encourage them to

follow-up their journey from newly-qualiﬁed teacher

to an experienced one who will be information liter-

ate and ready to create digitally-safe learning envi-

ronment. This is one of the conditions for sustainable

development of our country.

The analysis of educational programmes of

Ukrainian and American universities demonstrated

that in the latter there are much more opportuni-

ties for the development of digital and ICT literacy

skills of future teachers of foreign languages in the

terms of their speciﬁc activity and advanced use of

ICT. In Ukraine the positive practice is observed in

the universities participating in international projects

which help to acquire the best examples of innova-

tions in higher education. Three Ukrainian univer-

sities – Volodymyr Hnatiuk Ternopil National Ped-

agogic University, Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Ped-

agogic University, Bogdan Khmelnitsky Melitopol

State Pedagogical University – have a good range of

educational components designed for future teachers

of foreign languages to develop their digital and ICT

literacy skills. Among these three universities, Bog-

dan Khmelnitsky Melitopol State Pedagogical Uni-

versity has even more positive practices as its teachers

and students are the participants of “Learn to Discern:

Information and Media Literacy” project and Teach-

ing Excellence Programme, which boosted the use of

ICT in educational activity.

One more factor interpreted as a negative one all

over the world has made a positive impact on the is-

sue under our consideration. It is the COVID-19 pan-

demic as it made the university community to conquer

the digital world and focus on ICT use in the virtual

classroom. As ‘practice makes perfect’ most of teach-

ers and students conﬁrmed that they have improved

their digital and ICT literacy skills since March, 2020.

There are still a lot of issues waiting for further

study and ﬁnding solutions. For future teachers of for-

eign languages it would be a great opportunity to learn

handling with the virtual reality with speciﬁc pur-

poses in their professional area. Ability of producing

digital content is one more urgent need for teachers

of any subject. It is important for all modern teachers

to become competent in information and communica-

tion technologies use as they are to accelerate human

progress and work for its sustainable future by means

of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education

for the youth.

Ukrainian educational programmes need amend-

ments and adding the components aimed at the de-

velopment of advanced digital and ICT literacy skills

without any restrictions as for specialty.

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