Improving gerontological social work students’ digital competence: a pilot study of a teaching practice guided by DigComp 2.2

Digital competence is increasingly essential in gerontological social work (GSW), yet most curricula provide little structured preparation. This mixed-methods study examined changes in students’ self-rated digital competence across the duration of the course and explored how they perceived these developments. Thirty-two undergraduate GSW students from a Chinese college participated in this study. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using statistical and thematic analysis, respectively. Findings from both quantitative and qualitative data indicated an overall improvement in GSW students’ digital competence during the course. DC-US scores increased after the classroom-based phase and remained higher following the service-learning phase. Qualitative reflections validated and elaborated on this improvement by illustrating how students developed competencies across information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, content creation, safety, and problem solving. The study highlights that DigComp 2.2 can be meaningfully embedded into social work curricula to explicitly target digital competence training. The findings also reinforce the value of experiential learning as an instructional approach that contributes to GSW students’ digital competence development. Future research could further explore the application of the DigComp 2.2 framework in diverse social work education contexts and examine its long-term impact on GSW students’ digital competence development.