Digital footprint in education as a driver of professional growth in the digital age

Abstract

The large-scale global digital transformation of the economy is changing all spheres of human activity, introducing fundamental changes, including all the levels of educational system. The modern educational process is not limited to the digitisation of educational materials or to the introduction of remote education. Digital transformation impacts the educational activities in higher education, secondary, professional, and even preschool education. Development and implementation of digital learning environments is a prerequisite for obtaining detailed learning data of an individual for the entire time of his education, that caused the appearance of the lifelong digital educational footprint. The developers of digital educational courses plan to analyze the digital footprint and to use the results to adjust an educational trajectory when studying at higher educational institutions. The integration with social networks and messengers provides the data needed to create virtual assistant based on the individual behavior, that helps the student to master the course material. The collected data is also useful to create student’s digital twin, that is used by the teacher to conduct educational experimental research on the implementation of new educational technologies, or to adjust learning path to achieve maximum educational results of the particular student. The authors conducted the research on possibilities to use digital footprint for assessing the current state of the student’s competencies and for keeping the student’s competencies in an active state taken into account lifelong learning strategy. The proposed by the authors’ hypotheses could be applied to improve the effectiveness of adaptive systems of professional adult education.