The Impact of Digital Competences on Academic Procrastination in Higher Education: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Abstract

In the post-pandemic period, as a result of digitally-surrounded learning environments in higher education institutions (HEIs), some obstacles are observed in learning procedures such as academic procrastination because of poor digital competences. Because of the limited research focusing on specifically digital competences and academic procrastination of students in the post-pandemic period where HEIs have been digitally transformed at an unprecedented speed in the literature, this study aims to identify undergraduate students' levels of digital competences and academic procrastination and to explore the impact of digital competences on their attitudes towards academic procrastination in higher education. In a quantitative research design, 521 undergraduate students were surveyed taking online classes from different departments in different universities in Turkey. Descriptive analyses and structural equation modeling (SEM) were performed on the collected data by using SPSS v26.0 and IBM AMOS v24.0. According to the descriptive results, it was revealed that the overall average of the perceived digital competence is moderate, the perceived digital competences in everyday life online participation and learning are also moderate, and the highest digital competence is the students' perception of hedonic e-citizenship while the lowest perception refers to digital creation skills, and the students' attitude towards academic procrastination is low. The SEM results indicated that the selfperceived digital competences negatively affect academic procrastination; in other words, as the level of self-perceived digital competences increases, students' attitude towards academic procrastination decreases. The results of this study contribute to filling the research gap in the field of higher education by providing significant implications to policy-makers, educational administrators, and faculty in universities.