Society and technology have advanced to what we know today as the information society. In Gisbert Cervera et al. (2016) already warned about how social differences are becoming more evident and that it is affecting every aspect of society, including the education. It is important to develop digital skill as it has become essential in order to survive and even in modern society it could be claimed as a right (Alonso-García et al., 2018).

This information society where the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are so essential, people could be divided in to two categories: digital immigrants and digital natives (Aguilar-Salinas et al., 2019). Young people who were born and grew up in this society often have studied with ICT and new technological innovations in their environment. The modern technological culture and digital proficiency of the average student is radically different when compared to the environment that the current generation of educators grew up in. This creates a gap in knowledge and ability, between student and teacher, in many situations regarding the use of technological systems (Romero-Rodríguez et al., 2020).

Due to that, the methodological lines must include ICT and give the students an opportunity to have a more learning by doing perspective in education (Han and Ellis, 2020). However, to achieve that goal with efficiency one of the most important factors is the digital skills of the teacher (Moreno-Guerrero et al., 2020).

Digital skills could be defined as the level of ICT group of knowledge’s, including but not limited to, technological, informational, multimedia, and creative communication. Learning skills from all groups of knowledge is called the ICT literacy (Fuentes et al., 2019).

Otherwise, the concept of digital skills could be divided in three areas, technical, methodological and social categories. Technical skill could be defined as knowledge about a field and being able to manage the information related to that area of study. Methodological skills are about applying the knowledge and finally, social skills using ICT focus on using them with an ethical meaning and participate on the social activities (Trujillo et al., 2020).

Digital skills involve the critical and safe use of Information Society Technologies for work, leisure and communication. Relying on basic ICT skills: “use of computers to retrieve, evaluate, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet.” (European Parliament and the Council, 2006).

Moreover, at the same year the European Parliament acknowledged the fact that educators need an adequate level of training in ICT by publishing the following statement.

Following this statement Durán Cuartero et al. (2019) advised that European Higher Education Area recognize ICT as an exigency and a main source of information. They argued that universities and their professors have to evolve, innovate and reinvent themselves to adapt to the information society. During the education of the next generation of teachers and professors it is essential to break educational barriers and give new meanings to the teaching process to meet student’s needs (Alonso-García et al., 2018). Based on that, new methodologies are being developed such as, mobile learning, blended learning or flipped classrooms to name a few. The development of these methodologies can be greatly attributed to ICT and the resources it provides (Alonso-García et al., 2019). The use of those methodologies comes with the possibility of the permanent education, collaborative and the auto regulation of the student as the adaptation to different schedules (Romero-Rodríguez et al., 2020).

In Spain the main institution that coordinates educators knowledge regarding ICT is the “Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado (INTEF)” which in 2017 developed the “Marco Común de Competencia Digital Docente” which is a reference paper that divides digital skills into five areas:

Furthermore the COVID-19 situation has changed every aspects of educator’s lives. During the mandated period of lockdown in different areas around the world, educators had to quickly adapt their methods of delivering content to students. Scientific literature in recent years has focus on developing new teaching techniques using different digital devices (Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado, 2022). As a result of this a new paper was published in Spain titled: resolución de 4 de mayo de 2022, de la Dirección General de Evaluación y Cooperación Territorial, por la que se publica el Acuerdo de la Conferencia Sectorial de Educación, sobre la actualización del marco de referencia de la competencia digital docente which became the new framework paper. The new framework is similar to the previous one as it grades educators from an A1 to C2 level however the areas of evaluation have changed to:

On 14 March 2020, Royal Decree 463/2020 was approved in Spain, declaring a state of alarm for the management of the health crisis situation caused by COVID-19. Traditional classes were banned and were later moved to online, with the new vaccination mandate, the possibility of face-to-face classes began to change. From 17 September 2020, at the start of the 20/21 academic year, the University of Granada opted for semi-attendance with classes taught both face-to-face and online.

This new educational reality has brought about the necessary transformations for the digital era. Evaluation methods, curricular maps and teaching guides must be adapted for active student learning and formative assessment (Mora-Cantallops et al., 2022). To overcome the physical barrier, virtual learning communities have been created to facilitate fluid communication between participants. In addition, the active learning that requires ICT as the main tool also helps students create their own learning process using ICT and as they do, they start developing their digital skills (Aguilar-Salinas et al., 2019).

According to García-Planas and Taberna Torres (2020), the adaptation from a totally face-to-face model to an online or blended model has been very quick. Far from perceiving that the change has had a negative impact, they argue that they have been able to discover and explore issues that were not even considered before online or blended learning became the new norm. The most relevant example is the reduction of theoretical content which is accompanied by a series of activities allowing students to go deeper on the knowledge they get and have time to assimilate it appropriately. In this way, the contents and skills acquired during the lockdown contribute to their updating for the social perspective and working scenario where ITC are essentials (Torrado Cespón, 2021).

During the lockdown, many studies have been published on the assessment of teachers’ digital skills (Mannila, 2018; Fuentes et al., 2019; Ruiz Ruiz, 2020). These investigations have detected different strengths and weaknesses of educators from the perspective of students and educators themselves (Mora-Cantallops et al., 2022). The types of evaluations most frequently carried out are perceptual and performance evaluations (Rodríguez-García et al., 2019; Recio Muñoz et al., 2020; Mora-Cantallops et al., 2022).

In this context, evaluations of teaching performance are necessary and provide significant information, as they show how, in this period, ICT in particular has been a useful tool for the teaching/learning process. Also, they show how teacher training in digital skills is still an aspect that needs to be improved, so that the performance of education through digital tools can be efficient. Thus, Han and Ellis (2020) show that blended learning may not be beneficial if it is not accompanied by teacher training follow-up on the correct implementation of this learning approach, showing how teacher training is a decisive factor in the implementation of ICT and active methodologies.

Likewise, another challenge is the educators’ perception of blended or virtual education, as in many cases it is not positive (Aguilar-Salinas et al., 2019). They are unaware, for example, of the possibilities of open educational resources (Mora-Cantallops et al., 2022). Along the same lines, Romero-Rodríguez et al. (2020) show that although mobile devices are a commonly used tool among university students, they have not been integrated into the classroom.

On the other hand, Mora-Cantallops et al. (2022) point out that Spanish university teachers generally perceive themselves to have a level of digital competence between B1 and B2. This data varies according to their area of knowledge among other variables such as gender and age. For example, in their study, teachers in the areas of social sciences and humanities show a better self-perception than those in health sciences. Similarly, Boring (2017) reports more positive evaluations of male teachers by students regardless of their gender than those of female teachers. Tangalakis et al. (2022) however, in their evaluation results do not obtain such a significant differentiation, although they perceive less respectful attitudes toward their female teachers in distance education by male students.

The aim of this study is to find out the perception of students at the University of Granada on the digital skills of teaching staff based on the Marco Común de Competencia Digital Docente (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologías Educativas y de Formación del Profesorado [INTEF], 2017). The following questions will be addressed: Do male and female students have the same perception of the digital competences of their teachers? Are there differences between the digital competences of the teaching staff according to the students’ branch of knowledge? Does the assessment of the teacher vary according to the self-perceived digital competence of the student?

In this descriptive and correlational analysis study, the level of digital skills of teachers is assessed based on students’ perceptions. Thus, the aforementioned research questions have led to the following hypotheses:

The digital skills are one of the most useful for this modern society. The European Union is one of many institutions that are engaging the educators to start working on that. In 2019, they highlight how the digital native have easier learning concepts with ICT but if they wanted to develop new skills related to them, they need and educator the guides them to develop the skill properly (European Comissión, 2019).

For that the university must be the main institution to teach the digital skills. However, the digital skills level of university teachers does not meet the expectations placed upon them. There is a feeling amongst lecturers that their own level is B1 or B2 (Mora-Cantallops et al.2022), which is defined according to the Marco Común de Competencia Digital Docente as an intermediate level, although this is sufficient for their own work, it is a deficient level for university lecturers, as they are responsible for transmitting this type of knowledge to a large part of the Higher Education students. On the part of the students, their opinion coincides with this idea, as the students’ assessment reflected a score similar to that self-perceived by the lecturers.

The evaluation proposed by the students is very similar regardless of the characteristics of the students. Aspects such as gender are not a decisive factor in determining teachers’ ratings. If surveys are carried out on individual teachers of different sexes to assess teachers’ digital competences, there are generally no differences in their assessment on a quantitative level (Boring, 2017). When analyzing the qualitative level, more negative comments can be distinguished for female teachers than for male teachers (Tangalakis et al., 2022). In the results presented, it can be seen that there is no variation at the quantitative level according to the sex of the students, although it could be analyzed whether the type of comments made also varies according to the gender of the students.

Age is established as a determining factor regarding the use of technology. This is an important factor, as it is a way of identifying those students who have grown up in an environment where ICT is an element of the immediate environment or if it has been added as the person has developed. According to the average and mode of the students, it can be determined that the majority of students were born between 2001 and 1999, so they can be considered as digital natives (Aguilar-Salinas et al., 2019). However, there is no significant difference between students who were born during this period and those who are older. This shows that regardless of whether pupils are considered digital natives or not, as they are common elements in their lives, teachers are not able to develop the usage of different digital devices in the education process.

This idea is reinforced by the analysis of the assessment of students according to their level. The students’ self-perceived level is similar to that of the teachers. However, there are groups of students who are more qualified and other groups who consider them to have basic knowledge. This difference in level would be expected to make a difference in the assessment. The analysis shows that regardless of the level of the students, the assessment is the same, and does not meet the expectations of either the most qualified students with basic knowledge.

Another aspect to take into account when evaluating digital competences is the branches of knowledge. Depending on the degree being studied, there may be different expectations, as the training plans for each degree vary. Therefore, the grouping by branches of knowledge can be used as a reference to visualize which aspects are more developed and which need further reinforcement. The comparison between branches does not show a significant difference except for a comparison between Social and Legal Sciences and Health Sciences. If a search is made in the scientific literature, a possible explanation that is pointed out by Fuentes et al. (2019), as it is mentioned that in the case of the Social and Legal Sciences, the area of Information and Information Knowledge is the priority area, so much of the training in the degrees of this branch is focused on this aspect, which may generate the difference when compared with other branches.

Finally, COVID-19 has exposed the deficiencies regarding this type of skills, as with the onset of the pandemic, people’s mobility was reduced, making face-to-face attendance at the different educational institutions impossible. The transition from an entirely face-to-face education to an education leads to negative assessments on the part of the students (García-Planas and Taberna Torres, 2020). However, some of the students during this period had the opportunity to attend lectures face-to-face different subjects, while others were only able to do so online. Comparing the assessment of the students, no significant differences are shown, so it may be that the conversion from face-to-face to online has negatively affected the assessment of the students, but if it is compared the online lectures with attending only face-to-face to the practical part of the subjects does not effect on the student’s perception.

The European Union encourage the promotion of digital skills. The possibility of being able to develop useful digital skill that allows the correct participation of the user and the relationship with the environment, this being a right (European Parliament and the Council, 2006; Durán Cuartero et al., 2019). Spain, for its part, has generated a reference framework that serves as a guide to identify the minimum knowledge that must be obtained as an educator. It is necessary for teacher training however, especially for university teachers, to include specific training that helps teachers to develop a good level that makes it possible to transmit knowledge to students.

Students at the University of Granada have a unanimous opinion regarding professors’ digital skills. Among the different factors that could divide the students’ opinion, there is none that stands out as giving a significant variation, so it can be said that the university students’ assessment is that their teachers have an intermediate level. This level is sufficient for a large part of the population. University teaching staff, however, belong to a group in society that require a high level of proficiency in this skill, as they are responsible for transmitting knowledge to a large part of Higher Education. For this reason, university teacher training processes should include certification of digital skills.

On the other hand, when discarding the hypotheses, since it has been shown that the characteristics of the pupils do not influence their assessment of their teachers, it would be advisable to go deeper into the study itself. The results shown give an insight into the quantitative assessment that pupils have of their teachers. Adding a qualitative section however is a possible improvement of the present study to see if the characteristics of the students do change the comments made, as well as to see specifically what the students’ demands are and which of their needs are not being met.

It was also mentioned how the different university branches have different needs; therefore, teacher training should meet the requirements of the different branches. It was mentioned how in the branch of Social Sciences and Law the area of Information and Information Literacy teacher training is more encouraged. This is a good dynamic for students to improve their perception, as students will receive specific training according to their needs and expectations.

After analyzing and reviewing the results, it can be affirmed that the University of Granada does not have an adequate teaching development plan according to its students. Therefore, specific subjects for the development of digital skills should be considered as part of this process. Subsequently, further research can be carried out to analyses whether this implementation leads to an improvement in academic results and student evaluation.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.