DIGITAL FLUENCY IN HIGHER EDUCATION: INVESTIGATING TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION IN PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES OF PORTUGUESE EDUCATORS

Higher Education has been the target of enormous transformations resulting from the use of technology given that the educational context is increasingly embedded in this ecosystem.In the academy, we have seen a growing concern about teaching and learning requiring digital fluency.Indeed, it is important to reinforce teachers' and students' digital skills with strategies that make learning appealing, safe, and effective, without forgetting that digital fluency can be the basis for better teaching.However, the following questions arise: Are higher education teachers in Portugal responding and adapting to these challenges?What actions and strategies have they developed to apply technologies in classrooms and to promote digital fluency among students?And what actions should be taken, given that the young public is not only a consumer, but also a producer of online information and, at the same time, the internet has become a privileged resource for searching for easy and immediate information?This is the basis for this exploratory study, which aims to analyze the actions and strategies that higher education teachers in Portugal have developed to promote digital fluency, through digital technologies.This work seeks to observe how professors have worked on digital skills and encouraged their development in the academic community, particularly among their students.This can be observed through their pedagogical practices, namely in the creative and responsible use of information, communication strategies, content creation, and problem-solving or academic well-being promotion.To this end, a questionnaire survey is carried out among higher education teachers in Portugal, adapted from European Digital Competence Framework for Educators -DigCompEdu.The results point to a conservative view of integrating technologies in pedagogical practices, with most teachers using and encouraging general office-type software, learning platforms such as Moodle, or some applications for active learning moments, like Mentimeter, Kahoot or other apps.This reinforces the idea of previous studies that reveal that there is still some hesitation in openly embracing technologies and integrating them not just as tools, but as part of learning.