The Development of Virtual Professional Learning Community Platform with Experiential Design Thinking Process to Enhance Digital Teacher Competency

Abstract

In an era of digital transformation, technology has a strong influence on educational organizations. It is a huge challenge for teachers to deal with digital technology. A professional learning community platform integrated with technology is a powerful tool that can improve the digital competency of teachers to manage that challenge. The purpose of this research is to 1) develop a virtual professional learning community platform (VPLC platform) based on an experiential design thinking process, 2) to develop a training course for building digital teacher competency using an experiential design thinking process, and 3) to assess the digital competency of teachers using the VPLC platform in conjunction with the experiential design thinking process. Thirty teachers were selected by multi-stage sampling. The architectures used were the VPLC platform, the experiential design thinking process, and digital teacher competency. The research instrument was a digital competency assessment form for teachers with regard to the VPLC platform and an experiential design thinking process to enhance digital teacher competency. The findings revealed that 1) the VPLC platform model consisted of three components: 1) the VPLC platform, 2) the experiential design thinking process, and 3) digital teacher competency, brought together in four modules: 1) User management module, 2) Content management module, 3) Learner management module, and 4) Analytics management module and five processes: 1) Empathize the Concrete experience, 2) Define the Problem and Reflective observation, 3) Ideate the Abstract conceptualization, 4) Prototype, and 5) Test and Evolution and Active experimentation. The overall result of the quality of a training course in building digital teacher competency with an experiential design thinking process was at the highest quality value (Mean= 4.90, S.D.= 0.31). 3) The overall resulting digital competency of teachers was at the highest level (Mean= 4.80, S.D.= 0.40).