Teaching 21st Century Skills: myth or urgent reality?

Over the past 20 years, approaches to digital skills have changed significantly. From a technical perspective, our relationship with digital technology gradually became more multifaceted. While educational frameworks focused on abilities at the beginning of the 21st century, digital competencies are now associated with concepts such as media and information literacy, as well as broader cross-disciplinary competencies and soft skills such as collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc. This workshop will introduce the evolution of digital competencies from an international perspective with focus on the role of higher education. In particular, we will mobilize the work done in the reflections leading up to the Québec Digital Competency Framework, a structural measure of the Digital Action Plan for Education and Higher Education that takes into account every level of Québec’s education system. Despite intrinsic qualities, this type of framework (we can also mention the European DigComp frameworks) presents some conceptual and practical issues, as we need to go beyond the normative approach to digital to develop complete digital citizenship. We will adress that conceptual and practical side and emphasize, what university teachers can do to foster these needed "future skills". For example: We will suggest you some activities, which can be used in several disciplines, in order to encourage learners to develop their digital skills by addressing media, environment or ethical issues.

Ph.D. in Education with a specialty in Andragogy, Florent Michelot is a professor in the Administration, Arts, and Human Sciences sector at the Université de Moncton, Shippagan campus. Before that, he was a pedagogical advisor and a lecturer at the Université de Montréal. Their works focus on post-secondary education, particularly relating to digital technology. His current research focuses on two complementary fields: i) the adoption of digital technologies in e-learning (distance education on the Internet) by teachers and students, particularly in the context of disruptions caused by the pandemic; ii) the development of the so-called 21st-century skills, particularly critical thinking and information, digital and media literacy. Florent Michelot is also graduated in law, political science, and public administration, and has been a lecturer in the political science department of UQAM. He was also a member of the Commission de l’enseignement et de la recherche universitaire (Commission on University Education and Research) of the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation du Québec (Québec Superior Council of Education).
 
For more information about Florent please check out https://www.michelot.info/education/ and https://www.umoncton.ca/prof/umcs-michelot_florent.