Digitainability—Digital Competences Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Society

Validity and reliability of the Korean version of the Digital Burnout Scale

Objectives

To investigate the factor structure and verify the validity and reliability of the Korean version of the Digital Burnout Scale (DBS) among Generation Z university students.

Methodology

The World Health Organization guidelines were employed in the forward and back translation, synthesis, cross-cultural adaptation, and pre-survey phases to result in the Korean version of the DBS. The Korean version was then used to collect data from 330 university students online. Construct, convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity, and internal consistency were assessed.

Findings

The Korean version of the DBS had three subscales (digital aging, digital deprivation, and emotional exhaustion) and included 24 items. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis indicated adequate model fit indices. Convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity were satisfactory. The Cronbach's ⍺ for the overall scale was 0.95.

Conclusion

The Korean version of the DBS has good reliability and validity and can be used as a tool to assess the level of risk of digital burnout and provide appropriate support and intervention.

Implications

The Korean version of the DBS will serve as a framework for developing healthy digital education by grasping individual characteristics. Longitudinal research is recommended to identify factors that cause digital usage and burnout for various age groups.

Ethical principles for artificial intelligence in education

The advancement of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) has the potential to transform the educational landscape and influence the role of all involved stakeholders. In recent years, the applications of AIED have been gradually adopted to progress our understanding of students' learning and enhance learning performance and experience. However, the adoption of AIED has led to increasing ethical risks and concerns regarding several aspects such as personal data and learner autonomy. Despite the recent announcement of guidelines for ethical and trustworthy AIED, the debate revolves around the key principles underpinning ethical AIED. This paper aims to explore whether there is a global consensus on ethical AIED by mapping and analyzing international organizations' current policies and guidelines. In this paper, we first introduce the opportunities offered by AI in education and potential ethical issues. Then, thematic analysis was conducted to conceptualize and establish a set of ethical principles by examining and synthesizing relevant ethical policies and guidelines for AIED. We discuss each principle and associated implications for relevant educational stakeholders, including students, teachers, technology developers, policymakers, and institutional decision-makers. The proposed set of ethical principles is expected to serve as a framework to inform and guide educational stakeholders in the development and deployment of ethical and trustworthy AIED as well as catalyze future development of related impact studies in the field.

Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainably Developed Society

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted both preventive and reactive disease control measures, such as lockdown, physical distancing, and mask use, among others [...]

Design and Validation of a Novel Tool to Assess Citizens’ Netiquette and Information and Data Literacy Using Interactive Simulations

Until recently, most of the digital literacy frameworks have been based on assessment frameworks used by commercial entities. The release of the DigComp framework has allowed the development of tailored implementations for the evaluation of digital competence. However, the majority of these digital literacy frameworks are based on self-assessments, measuring only low-order cognitive skills. This paper reports on a study to develop and validate an assessment instrument, including interactive simulations to assess citizens’ digital competence. These formats are particularly important for the evaluation of complex cognitive constructs such as digital competence. Additionally, we selected two different approaches for designing the tests based on their scope, at the competence or competence area level. Their overall and dimensional validity and reliability were analysed. We summarise the issues addressed in each phase and key points to consider in new implementations. For both approaches, items present satisfactory difficulty and discrimination indicators. Validity was ensured through expert validation, and the Rasch analysis revealed good EAP/PV reliabilities. Therefore, the tests have sound psychometric properties that make them reliable and valid instruments for measuring digital competence. This paper contributes to an increasing number of tools designed to evaluate digital competence and highlights the necessity of measuring higher-order cognitive skills.

Digitainability and Financial Performance: Evidence from the Serbian Banking Sector

This study aimed to explore the cross-section of digitalization and sustainability in banking and its effect on bank performance. The sample consisted of all of the banks (n = 25) operating in the Republic of Serbia from 2011 to 2020. The research results show that the banks focusing on digitalization and sustainability are profitable, even in the face of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Furthermore, using the Pearson’s correlation, the study shows that the level of investment in digital transformation has a strong relationship with the net result. We advocate that digitainability in banking is an important factor in uncertain times and should be fostered and included in bank strategies in the post-COVID 19 world. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that provides insight into digitainability and bank performance.