A Quantitative Case Study of Digital Competency in an Educational Setting

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the perception of the senior students at the Faculty of Technical and Vocational Education at a public Malaysian university based on the 21st century model of digital competence which includes skills such as information processing, communication, content creation, security, interactivity, virtual compatibility, hypertextuality, social media and cyber ethics. To this end, 75 Malaysian students participated in this study and a five-point likert scale on digital competency was used to obtain the empirical data. The questionnaire included 55 items and was validated by a number of experts in the field. The descriptive statistical analysis of digital competency found that the value of the virtuality was the highest, while the value obtained for the cyber ethical domain was the least. The participants held that they had mastered digital competencies especially in the aspects of virtuality and interactivity. However, they are rather weak in terms of cyber ethics and hypertextuality. Mastery of digital skills is of overriding importance in the 21st century and digital competency in technology is unimpeachably important in education as it can positively impact different aspects of academic life.