Correlation Among Competences Involved in Digital Problem-Solving Activities with Upper Secondary School Students

In today's increasingly interconnected and technology-driven world, developing strong problem-solving and digital competences is the key to preparing students for a world where technology impacts society, work and education, and to achieving personal and professional fulfilment. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the correlation and the development of problem-solving and digital competences of secondary school students solving problems with an Advanced Computing Environment (ACE). During an online training, students solve a contextualized problem every ten days, collaborating asynchronously with other students. Each solution is evaluated using an evaluation rubric based on five indicators: comprehension, identification of a solution strategy, development of the solution process, argumentation, use of an ACE. The research questions are: (RQ1) “How students develop problem-solving and digital competences during the online training?” (RQ2) “How do the development of problem-solving competence (in its four indicators: comprehension, identification of a solution strategy, development of the solution process, argumentation) and the development of digital competence relate to each other during the online training?”. To answer the research questions, the solutions of 158 grade 12 students to ten problems were analysed. The research methodology consists of three phases: analysis of two case studies; analysis of all students’ grades; analysis of student responses to a final questionnaire. The analyses were carried out considering both the overall evaluations and the evaluations of each indicator. The correlations between the different indicators were also analysed, seeking confirmation of this evolution in the submissions of some exemplary case studies. The results show that solving contextualized problems with the ACE improved students’ problem-solving and digital competences. The results also show a strong correlation between identifying a solving strategy and developing the solving process, and between these two indicators and the effective use of the ACE.