Digital Storytelling for Digital Skills development. A pilot experience with in-training educators

The present paper aims at presenting the results of a pilot experience of digital skills promotion within in-training educators carried out at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. The experience was realised in the academic year 2020/2021 through the use of the MOOC "Digital Storytelling" of the Erasmus+ DigiCulture project (Andone, 2019; Re, 2022). The MOOC, assigned to more than 100 students participating in the "Educational Research Methodology" laboratory, and designed in 5 modules, aims at soliciting the digital skills of Information and Data Literacy, Communication and Collaboration, Digital Content Creation according to the DigComp 2.1 model (Carretero et al., 2017) through the Digital Storytelling learning strategy. The pilot experience was carried as a response to the educational urgency of promoting digital competences in (future) teachers and educators for the development of the national social and educational context (Italian Law 107/2015 , Observatory of Digital Competences, 2019; OECD, 2019; Digital Education Action Plan 2021-2027), especially following the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic that has brought the need to redesign and reconfigure learning processes and programmes through the use of digital technologies (Secundo, Rippa & Meoli, 2020), Distance Learning and Digital Integrated Learning. The results show that the self-perception of the competences of “Browsing, searching and filtering data, information and digital content",” Integrating and re-elaborating digital content" and "Collaborating through digital technologies" improved in a statistically positive way within the participants.