Digital competencies of technical-professional students: creation of a causal model from a PLS-SEM approach

ABSTRACT

Currently, we are in a situation of transition in the way of teaching, caused by COVID-19. In a very short time, students have been forced to introduce in their teaching-learning process the use of digital resources that allow them to continue learning. Faced with this situation, an adequate digital competence is required, understood not as a single skill, but as a set of skills that facilitate the use of educational technology, teamwork, critical thinking, creativity and communication. The objective of this work is to propose a causal structural model of the dimensions that configure digital competence in technical-professional students. The study was carried out with a non-probabilistic sample of 17301 students from AIEP of the Andres Bello University in Chile. The validity of this instrument was carried out by applying the partial least squares (PLS) method of structural equation modeling. The main result was that the model explained 32.90% of the true variance of the students' digital competence. In addition, the reliability, convergent and discriminant validity of the established causal relationships were verified, determining a model with an acceptable goodness of fit.