Drivers of Faculty Pedagogical Digital Competence or How to Get Things Going Online

The world`s health crisis was started and the area of higher education was significantly challenged by the spread of the virus SARS-CoV-2. The academic community was forced to rethink its ways of learning and teaching dynamically. It transformed the understanding of the faculty competence as an essential component of the continuity of qualitative education, which emphasizes the need to increase the competence to work in a technology-enhanced study environment and to support students in achieving learning outcomes remotely. The aim of the article is to explain the pedagogical digital competence of faculty, which reflects one of the research aspects covered in the State Research Programme (SRP) dedicated to mitigating the consequences of COVID-19. The research methodology consists of a set of quantitative data, which was obtained by surveying 349 faculty from 33 higher education institutions of Latvia. In turn, a questionnaire was developed based on the obtained conclusions, performing an analysis of literature and educational guidelines. Patterns of the use of educational technologies of faculty were analyzed and described in the framework of the research. The wide analysis performed during the research can be summarized in several conclusions. (1) Skills that faculty have self-assessed as the highest primarily characterize the use of technologies and technological solutions (TTS – analogous to hardware and software) to meet students basic learning needs. In turn, skills in the use of TTS, which would help students to develop digital competence and achieve study results in line with labor market trends, are assessed lower. (2) Faculty consider themselves to be more proficient in using TTS to promote students’ cognitive skills than in acquiring practical skills. (3) Faculty feel more proficient in providing feedback to students, rather than collecting it from them and performing summative rather than formative assessment. (4) The improvement of pedagogical digital competence (PDC) of faculty is driven more by cooperation with students than by administrative pressure.