Structuring a course service for developing the learning digital skills of university students in Fribourg

Abstract

This paper is an analytical description of a course service that aims to improve the digital skills of university students. This innovation is part of the Digital Skills program of Swissuniversities (P8) and is currently developed in Fribourg (collaboration between the University and the HES-SO Fribourg). It is more a course service than a course because we propose: different modalities (a 3 ECTS course in Autumn and a self-learning course all year long), flexibility of contents (adaptation of the digital skills to be developed), flexibility of the course opening (students from all faculties and all BA years) and communication actions on the course in the institutions. We first analyze why a digital skills development is important today and what the main learning objectives are. A second part shows, with the help of surveys on the students’ learning needs in digital skills, why flexibility has become a key element in the design of our service. A third section describes how the construction of a detailed competence framework facilitates the definition of learning resources that are aligned with the targeted digital skills and then enables the implementation of content flexibility. Finally, we describe the course system structure itself.