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Rapid technological growth and digital transformation have created new opportunities for society and, at the same time, new challenges (Economou, 2016). In workplaces, digital technologies are contributing to a new wave of automatization. Daily tasks are increasingly performed by robots, replacing employees (OECD, 2019). Although the use of digital technologies offers many opportunities, there is a high risk that the public will not be fully prepared for them in the future. In order to make full use of the potential of digital technologies, the education system should help young people develop the knowledge, skills and values they need to live and work in such an environment (Economou, 2016; Rubene,2018).
In a changing global economy, to a large extent, it is skills that define the competitiveness of the employee and the capacity to drive innovation, so it is essential to provide people with essential skills to ensure high-quality participation in the labor market and the ability to actively engage in civil processes (European Commision, 2016). More than half of Europe’s 12 million long-term unemployed are considered to be low-skilled. At the same time, a large proportion of employers point to the difficulty of finding a suitably qualified workforce capable of creating innovation and stimulating growth (European Commision, 2016).
Non-routine and interactive tasks play an increasingly important role in human life, thereby also increasing the importance of transversal competences (Direito, Duarte, & Pereira, 2014) as a key quality criterion for an employee, pointing to the need for the development of student transversal competences in the study process as one of the essential quality indicators of the study process. Transversal competences such as critical thinking, teamwork, problem-solving and creativity, and digital and foreign language skills play an increasingly important role in human life – they are essential prerequisites for personal and professional fulfillment and are applicable in different areas of life (European Parliament, 2018).
The UNESCO 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set a goal to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning (UNESCO, 2017a). The section on higher education indicates the need to align the process of higher education with the requirements of the labor market. In particular, the role of transversal competences has been highlighted by the fact that modern jobs require workers who have not only basic and specific technical and professional skills but also transversal competences (problem-solving, analytical skills, creativity, entrepreneurship, etc.). They are necessary to ensure flexible career changes and to ensure the implementation of various lifelong learning strategies (UNESCO, 2017b). It is precisely the rapid evolution of the labor market that requires the development of knowledge and skills throughout life.
The European Reference Framework of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning defines the competences that each citizen needs for personal growth and development, employment, active civic engagement and social inclusion, emphasizing the importance of transversal competences such as communication in the mother tongue and foreign languages, digital competence, social and civic competences, entrepreneurship, cultural awareness and expression (European Commission, 2006).
Despite the fact that more than 10 years have passed between defining and revising key competences, the conceptual content of competences has remained almost unchanged, indicating the stability and relevance of these competences. Higher education institutions need to ensure that they equip graduates with these relevant and up-to-date skills and competences (European Commision, 2016).
The problem of the study is that education providers, on the one hand, and employers and students, on the other, have different perceptions of how prepared graduates are for the labor market, as there is uncomformity between the supply of higher education and the knowledge and skills needed by the economy. This unconformity also appears in the definition of digital competence, as it does not have unified structure and empirically measurable indicators for its development in higher education (A New Skills Agenda for Europe, 2016; Maderick, Zhang, Hartley, Marchand, 2016; Spante, Hashemi, Lundin, Algers, 2018).
The above-mentioned allowed us to formulate the aim of the present research: to study the essence, structure, implementation and indicators of the concept of the digital transversal competence of university students for its improvement in the study process and raise the question of the study: What is digital competence and how to assess it in university study programs?