Investigating the digital skills of undergraduate students in terms of various variables

Abstract

It is argued that, young people growing up surrounded by digital technologies intuitively acquire digital skills and therefore do not need digital education or training. For this reason, with the belief that students already have digital skills, digital literacy education courses are reduced or removed in educational institutions. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of development of digital skills in the education. The purpose of this research is to examine the digital skills of students in terms of different variables. This research was conducted as a survey research. The participant group of the research consists of 423 undergraduate students who have just started to study at a university. According to the results of the research, the digital skill levels of the students who attend the IT courses are significantly higher than the students who do not. Digital skills were significantly higher for the male students than for the female students. In addition, the digital skills of the students who took the IT courses from the teacher trained in teaching digital skills were significantly higher than the students who took the course from teachers from other professions.