Digital Literacy: A Catalyst for the 21^stCentury Education

Abstract

The seamless integration of new digital technologies into higher education teaching and learning has transformed education pedagogies and changed how students learn. The students are now required to have digital competencies to survive in the era of learning with technology; therefore, measuring the students' digital competencies is of utmost importance. This study evaluates the first-year university students' digital competencies at a higher education institute using a newly designed digital literacy measuring tool named digitlitfj. The digitlitfj is an online tool consisting of a 5 point Likert scale questionnaire ranging from 'No understanding' to 'Advanced level of understanding' that was piloted to the first-year university students. The results show that 86.15% of the students were average to very highly digitally literate. Also, Deep learning, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest and Decision Tree algorithms in RapidMiner were used to evaluate the most important and influential variables in predicting an individual's digital literacy competency. The results show that all the variables utilized in the research were important, with computer literacy being the most influential variable in predicting an individual's digital literacy.

Learning Approaches Influence on College Students' Digital Literacy: The Role of Self-Determination Theory

“…This study demonstrated that relatedness is a significant factor in enhancing digital literacy. Then again, when digital literacy is regarded as an ability, competence among SDT has been assumed to be a major influencing factor [2], [3], [4]. However, the influence of competence in this study was not significant.…”

“…Competence has been considered as a crucial dimension that impacts the learning abilities and outcomes of learners in the digital era [28], [43]. Moreover, students with a higher perception of competence and control reported more intrinsic interest in school-related activities [4], [19]. Furthermore, Vos et al [20] suggested that intrinsic motivation, in respect of competence, is intricately connected to the use of deep strategies.…”

“…Digital literacy has a profound impact on those who live in a digital environment in the 21 st century [1], [2], [3], [4]. It is critical to promote college students' digital literacy to catch the changing needs for digital skills in the labor market and society [5], [6].…”

Visual literacy shown through a magnifying lens by high school students

“…Further, it introduces a new VL framework and VL scale to measure the visual literacy competencies of the students in Fiji. A newly designed and validated scale to evaluate the visual literacy competency of an individual. The VL skills scale is similar to the digital literacy scale developed by Reddy et al (2020d). The validated scale is unique and the first one for the South Pacific and, to some extent, the world. The study contributes to the global literature on visual literacy by introducing a new methodology (framework, questionnaire and scale) to evaluate an individual's VL skills and competencies.…”

“…A newly designed and validated scale to evaluate the visual literacy competency of an individual. The VL skills scale is similar to the digital literacy scale developed by Reddy et al (2020d). The validated scale is unique and the first one for the South Pacific and, to some extent, the world.…”