This article aims to answer the question of what effect the cooperative learning method Group Investigation (or Group Research) has on the development of digital skills of 1st year Mechanical Engineering students, thus contributing to the knowledge in a field of research that is still very recent. The pedagogical approach used follows the steps of the Group Investigation method. The analysis of the collected data from the pre and post digital competence questionnaire (adapted to Portugal from the DigComp European framework) shows that the use of cooperative learning, more specifically Group Investigation, had a significant impact on the overall scale’s score. Among the 5 main competences (subscales) of digital skills, “Information and data literacy”, “Communication and collaboration” and “Safety” showed statistically significant improvements, and students’ proficiency levels moved from foundational to intermediate or advanced levels. This study allows us to point out clues for a more effective and proficient use of digital tools for researching and processing information. According to the results of this study, although the scores in the other subscales related to the digital skills, “Creating digital content” and “Problem solving” increased, they were not statistically significant, which leads the authors to suggest further investigation on how teachers can fully promote all digital skills.