MakeITeasy : guiding higher education actors to take ownership of the development and strengthening of their digital skills

Abstract

The MakeITeasy platform is the backbone of the University of Geneva's "Digital Skills" institutional project. The objective of the system is to allow the actors, students, teachers, researchers, administrative and technical staff to develop and strengthen their digital skills. It is a matter of allowing individuals to evaluate themselves to self-regulate. The design of the platform is organized around a framework of digital skills, which is based on the DigComp framework of the European Commission and the Digital Capabilities Framework of JISC. The MakeITeasy platform is organized around four components: 1) a self-positioning test, allowing people to situate themselves in the reference framework; this test produces 2) an individual digital skills profile, which offers then to compare oneself to 3) target profiles to be reached; and finally, 4) a recommendation system which lists training courses to fill the gaps in one's skills. The platform is currently being developed for the students, doctoral students, and teacher populations. The self-positioning tool covers the generic competencies of the reference framework in its entirety while being as concise as possible so that it can be completed in full. The questions are based on occupational situations because the context to which they are attached makes it easier to assess the mastery of the skill by different categories of members of the university community. The tool presents the same generic competency at least three times in different scenarios and uses the responses to the three situations to decide the level of mastery. The test situations and questions as well as the entire platform were evaluated by various user tests.