Digital Literacy: Finding the link between digital literacy and student’s competence, academic performance and possibility of completing a course in Information Technology.
Context of the research problem
“ICILS provided direct student assessment results showing that being born in a digital era does not mean that students are able to use new technologies in a critical, creative and informative way” ( The International Computer and Information Literacy Study(ICILS), 2014). It is well documented in literature that digital literacy has an influence in students’ academic performance (see for example Jeffrey, Hegarty, Kelly, Penman, Coburn & McDonald, 2011; Argentin, Gui, Pagani, Stanca, 2014; Barlow-Jones,2008;Amiri, 2009; Ladbrook & Probert, 2011;Yang & Kim,2014) which in turn is a contributing factor to students’ continuing the course in pursue. Digital literacy is variously defined in literature, as more than the ability to read, write, or use gadgets, (Eshet, 2012 & Eshet-Alkalai, 2004) states that “having digital literacy requires more than just the ability to use software or to operate a digital device, it includes a large variety of complex skills such as cognitive, motoric, sociological and emotional skills that users need to master in order to use digital environments effectively.” This is further supported by (the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy’s Digital Task Force(Task Force), 2013) which stated …show more content…
Digital literacy builds on top of information
Context of the research problem
“ICILS provided direct student assessment results showing that being born in a digital era does not mean that students are able to use new technologies in a critical, creative and informative way” ( The International Computer and Information Literacy Study(ICILS), 2014). It is well documented in literature that digital literacy has an influence in students’ academic performance (see for example Jeffrey, Hegarty, Kelly, Penman, Coburn & McDonald, 2011; Argentin, Gui, Pagani, Stanca, 2014; Barlow-Jones,2008;Amiri, 2009; Ladbrook & Probert, 2011;Yang & Kim,2014) which in turn is a contributing factor to students’ continuing the course in pursue. Digital literacy is variously defined in literature, as more than the ability to read, write, or use gadgets, (Eshet, 2012 & Eshet-Alkalai, 2004) states that “having digital literacy requires more than just the ability to use software or to operate a digital device, it includes a large variety of complex skills such as cognitive, motoric, sociological and emotional skills that users need to master in order to use digital environments effectively.” This is further supported by (the American Library Association Office for Information Technology Policy’s Digital Task Force(Task Force), 2013) which stated …show more content…
Digital literacy builds on top of information