Digital Generation Influence on the Post-COVID-19 Use of Digital Technologies in Engineering Education: A Statistical Study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global health crisis that led to a sudden migration of many educational activities to digital environments. This migration affected the digitization process of higher education. This paper conducts a quantitative statistical analysis of the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the habits of use of information and communication technologies (ICT) among 426 Latin American university professors in engineering areas. In particular, this impact has been analyzed in terms of the digital generation of the participating professors. To achieve this, the responses given by them on a validated questionnaire were examined for the purposes of this research. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase of up to 47% in the use of ICT among engineering professors, but unevenly according to the different uses of these tools within the teaching activity. In addition, in engineering areas, it seems that digital natives have increased their use of ICT more than digital immigrants after the pandemic (between 8% and 20%, depending on the type of digital tool in question). It is suggested that universities take measures for the digital integration of older professors.