Development of teacher digital competence in the area of e-safety through educational video games

Abstract

There is a clear need to promote motivating and effective training actions for the development of teachers’ digital competence, especially in the area of e-safety. Although educational video game-based learning has proven effective to improve motivation and learning outcomes, the existing evidence about its effectiveness for the development of teachers’ digital competence is very lim-ited. This study examines the use of educational video games in an online course in MOOC format with the aim of developing teachers’ digital competence in the e-safety area. A total of 179 teachers from nonuniversity schools in the region of Castilla y León (Spain) participated in this study. A pre-test and a post-test were used to measure the knowledge acquired by the participants, and a questionnaire was used to measure their perceptions. The obtained results suggest that game-based learning using educational video games is an effective and viable approach to train teachers in the e-safety area of digital competence.