Digital educational technology for developing 21st-century skills

This dataset consist of three data files for each research instrument that was used to collect data: a questionnaire, document analysis, and interviews.

The questionnaire was created on the Qualtrics online platform, and was exported to an Excel spreadsheet. A total of 11 participants completed the questionnaire. The aim was to determine if the educators made provision for developing 21st-century skills in their fully online modules, and if they did make provision, what technologies were they using at the time to develop these skills.  The questionnaire consisted of multiple-choice, multiple-option, and closed and open-ended questions.

The second research instrument used in this study was a document analysis; a process that was followed by reviewing the curriculum documents and resources in the participants’ online modules. Access to 18 online modules on the learning management system of the higher education institution was granted in order for the researcher to collect all the necessary resources. All the curriculum documents and resources that could be downloaded were gathered and saved in the cloud-storage drive. Other components that could not be downloaded included discussion groups and online assessments. These resources were observed, and relevant details were noted down on an Excel spreadsheet by the researcher and saved on the cloud-storage drive.   

The third research instrument used in this study was interviews. In this study semi-structured interviews were chosen as the type of interviews to be conducted after the questionnaire and document analysis. The researcher pre-developed a few guiding questions for the interviews. However, the researcher also allowed the participants to give their own feedback and perspective on 21st-century skills and using DET to develop these skills in fully online learning. Only five of the participants who voluntary agreed were invited and participated in a follow-up interview. The interviews took place over a Zoom video call and were approximately 30 minutes long. 

For data analysis, the researcher used a deductive data analysis approach to organise and analyse the findings from the questionnaire, document analysis, and interviews. The data was first divided into categories. The categories were determined by identifying the most commonly used words in the responses of the educators. The responses in each category were then translated into a percentage value to determine the highest- and lowest-ranking responses. The categories were further grouped together based on the same concept. The percentages of the grouped categories were then merged, recalculated, and organised from large to small. The analysed data were then converted to charts to visually illustrate the trends and patterns of the data. Finally, the analysed data was again stored on the cloud-storage drive with a password for protection.

The next data analysis process was for the documents where the curriculum and resources documents of the educators’ online modules were downloaded and captured from the learning management system of the institution. All the files were worked through, and the relevant content was evaluated and compared against a checklist that was designed based on the P21 Framework definitions of the 4Cs (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009) and the affordances of DET (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine, 2018). The curriculum documents and the analysis of these documents were all captured in an Excel spreadsheet and saved on the cloud-storage drive and assigned a unique password to secure access.

Lastly the video recordings were transcribed with transcription software called Descript. The transcript text was then captured into an Excel spreadsheet under each main topic and questions that were discussed. The Excel spreadsheet was then stored with a unique password on the cloud-storage drive. Once the spreadsheet was saved, the analysis continued by grouping each topic’s results per theme and summarising the discussion to draw conclusions about the topic. The final spreadsheet with findings was safely stored on the cloud-storage drive with a password to secure the data.