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Pre-service teacher’s self-perception of digital literacy: The case of Israel

• Published: 17 November 2020
• Volume 26 , pages 2879–2896, ( 2021 )

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• Yehuda Peled   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8385-2863 1  

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Teachers provide society with literacy needs. They instruct students to acquire the essential skills and competencies required for a successful social integration. Thus, the need to identify digital readiness in teachers. The purpose of this study is to assess the level of digital literacies and digital readiness of students majoring in education. The research method includes a questionnaire comprising 54 items. The sample consists of 1265 students. The results show that more than half of the participants report an overall high level of literacy in all areas. Their sense of readiness for teamwork and their ethical readiness is high. Nonetheless, a low sense of readiness is found in a first and advanced order of readiness. The practical implications of these findings are crucial, as they can assist faculty and educational policymakers identify the strengths and weaknesses of students’ digital literacies.

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1 Introduction

Today’s information and communications technology (ICT) systems constitute part of our daily life and workplaces (Bresnahan and Yin 2017 ). One’s effective involvement in society depends on one’s digital skills, which are correlated to one’s educational level (Peromingo and Pieterson 2018 ). Both education and workplace requirements’ entail applicable technological knowledge. Workers are constantly required to use relevant technology and update their digital skills (Peromingo and Pieterson 2018 ). Digital Competency brings forth changes and challenges to educators, to their required skills, learning forms, and educational environment. As facilitators and mediators of knowledge and skills, their duty is not only to be competent in subject knowledge transfer, but to prepare their students for twenty-first Century competencies (Madalińska-Michalak et al. 2018 ): for digital literacy and readiness (Godbey 2018 ).

The research literature on Digital Literacy (DL) is vast. DL is defined as ‘the confident, critical and creative use of ICT to achieve goals related to work, employability, learning, leisure, inclusion and/or participation in society’ (Ala-Mutka 2011 ). As a recent study explains, twenty-first century educators persistently and increasingly stress the importance of ICT literacy (a synthesis of information literacy [information], internet literacy [communication], and computer literacy [technology]), and inquire into how it can be formally and informally acquired to facilitate students’ effective integration in today’s highly technologically dependent society (Lau and Yuen 2014 ). This notwithstanding, there is a research gap on pre-service teacher’s digital literacy perception, usage, and posterior readiness to include digital environments in the transfer of subject knowledge.

Filling this research gap is crucial, as it can have direct consequences for related policy approaches and subsequent measurements. In fact, some researchers hold that being digitally literate is crucial to acquire other key competencies such as language, mathematics, learning to learn, cultural awareness, etc., all of which ensure that modern citizens participate actively in society and economy (Ala-Mutka 2011 ).

This study fills the above-mentioned gap. It presents a new digital literacy scale, the Seven Domain of Digital Literacy (SDDL), and discusses the Digital Readiness of pre-service, undergraduate students to include Digital environments in their professional duties. An additional objective of this study is to contribute to the research literature, both theoretically and practically.

The present study’s model (SDDL) and its conclusions contribute to existing theory and practice in the present domain. This is a tool which can help determine how teachers should be educated in undergraduate programs. Assessing and knowing beforehand the Digital Literacy Levels and Readiness of undergraduates can help improve instructors in their educational curricula.

2 Theoretical framework

2.1 defining digital literacy.

The scholarly research on educationally contextualized literacies develops constantly (Oliveira et al. 2019 ), as literacies’ functions and forms are determined by the constant change of society and its technology (Leu et al. 2017 ). The old meaning of literacy, i.e., the ability to read and write to meet society’s needed standards and expectations (McArthur et al. 2018 ), has become obsolete. The state-of-the-art literature understands the general concept of literacy as the knowledge and the skills needed for contemporary socio-cultural interactions, which comprehend digital (e.g., touch screen tablets) non-digital tools (e.g., paper books) (Leu et al. 2017 ). In other words, being digitally literate still presupposes the old literate skills associated with reading, e.g.: understanding a printed text (McArthur et al. 2018 ). The different information and communication technologies (ICT) have added another layer to the twenty-first century literacy requirements, as these are not only comprehended as a set of needed skills, but also as a set of technologically mediated practices within society (McArthur et al. 2018 ).

Thus, digital literacy, a term which emerged in the 90’s and was popularized by Paul Gilster ( 1997 ) (McArthur et al. 2018 ), refers on the one hand, to a set of skills, attitudes and knowledge needed to access digital information effectively, efficiently, and ethically (Julien 2018 ). On the other hand, it stresses the digital tools available to communicate with others, to create meaning, and to evaluate digital content (Neumann et al. 2017 ). Nonetheless, researchers tend to disagree as to the most important digital skills needed to be in command of today’s digitally needed proficiency. Some educational researchers identify digital literacy by categorizing its skills into information access, online participation, computer ability, search engine’s skills, and skills required to evaluate found information (McArthur et al. 2018 ). Others divide the digital skills into Operational, Mobile, Navigation, Social, and Creative domains (Peromingo and Pieterson 2018 ). The definition of Digital Literacy employed for the purposes of this study is: ‘the confident, critical and creative use of ICT to achieve goals related to work, employability, learning, leisure, inclusion and/or participation in society’ (Ala-Mutka 2011 ).

2.1.1 Defining digital readiness

ICT readiness describes the preparedness of people for using the digital environment, basically concerning its learning and studying purposes (Becker 2018 ). It involves the self-perception of technologically related skills, attitudes, competencies and knowledge intended to meet the expectations related to specific contexts (Hong and Kim 2018 ). In other words, it comprehends active participation, the application of digital media, and the overcoming of old studying and learning patterns.

2.1.2 Teachers’ professional development in the digital age

Teachers’ key role regarding student’s achievements in the use of technology and technology competence constitute an essential requisite for an effective teacher profession (Drossel and Eickelmann 2017 ; Instefjord and Munthe 2016 ). Urged by educational reforms, educators are under constant pressure to improve, innovate, and display higher skills before their students (Priestley 2011 ), including the use of technology in the teaching context (Gudmundsdottir and Hatlevik 2018 ). Educators around the world and in Israel are trying to adapt their educational systems to the changes that characterize current societies (Tsybulsky and Levin 2017 ; Sjöberg 2018 ). Accordingly, the constant search for effective means of achieving teachers’ ongoing professional development has become a global concern (Bautista and Oretga-Ruiz 2017 ). Scholars and policymakers increasingly focus on identifying and cultivating teachers, who possess the ability to act as leaders concerning their own self-learning, as well as concerning their ability to educate others with the aim of leveraging their abilities to guide the learning processes of their colleagues (Katzenmeyer and Moller 2009 ).

Teachers’ professional development in Israel

Israel is a country of immigrants. Following the second world war, the Jewish population has increased from 716,000 to 7 million (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2017 ), of which there are approximately 2 million Arabic speakers. The influx of immigrants continues till today. The mother tongue of 50 % of the Israeli population is not Hebrew (Hebrew is the official language). This has implications for those who attend tertiary education, as studies are usually conducted in Hebrew. Part of the online research is conducted in English and in other languages, thus suiting the student preferences. The seven domains of digital literacy (SDDL), the measuring tool of this study, has been tested in Israel and in several other countries such as the USA (Shannon 2017 ), Japan, the Philippines, Korea, South Africa, Croatia, Indonesia, Kenya and Qatar (Peled, Un-published work) with similar results. Hence, it can be concluded that language does not play an influential role here.

Israel’s Ministry of Education has launched a national computerization program for adapting the education system to the twenty-first century (Ministry of Education 2014 ). The program promotes ICT integration in schools. Its purpose is to turn these into computerized organizations. The program stresses the implementation of innovative pedagogies as well as the development of DL. Israeli colleges of education train its student-teachers to teach their students twenty-first century skills (Naifeld and Simon 2017 ). Thus, media and digital literacy education is fundamentally implicated in the practice of the Israeli K-12 education (Alt and Raichel 2018 ). Moreover, as the research literature makes it clear, instructing teachers’ trainees to teach digital skills is a challenge. For example, Davidson and Glassner ( 2016 ) inquire how can teachers be trained to advance life competencies and skills. Shamir-Inbal and Blau ( 2016 ) report that course tasks which are intended to develop digital literacy skills do not help students develop them. In this context, the results reported here, point to a consensus among the learners concerning the added value of collaboration in learning processes and outcomes. According to our research findings, digital platforms support a successful collaboration, which demands a further development of socio-emotional thinking skills. The ICT contexts provide a platform for sharing information, thoughts and comments concerning learning outcomes created by peers. They also constitute a forum for writing texts, which serve as extensions of pre-existing course materials. This suggests that there is a need to acquire new social norms concerning online interactions.

Although some claim that Israeli teachers have a low level of digital literacy (Aram and Sverdlov 2017 ), there are reports of a continuous change. This can be attested in Israeli schools in the increment of teachers’ understanding of their role in implementing additional skills to pure knowledge. The foregoing is a slow and tedious process (Blau et al. 2016 ; Redmond and Peled 2018 ).

Considering the above, we present a conceptual framework which assesses pre-service educators’ digital readiness and digital literacy, as this is crucial to increase educators’ awareness and digital competences for facilitating accurate digital literacy to future generations. Our study is based on the Seven Domains of Digital Literacy model (SDDL), which was developed and validated by Kurtz and Peled ( 2016a ), which enables the identification of levels of digital readiness and competence.

2.1.3 The seven domains of digital literacy

The seven domains of digital literacy (SDDL), which were assembled and tested by Kurtz and Peled ( 2016b ) are: Information collection, information evaluation, information management, information processing, teamwork, integrity awareness, and social responsibility. These domains represent the basis for one’s ability and preparedness to manage complex digital environments (Horrigan 2016 ). Here is a short description of the seven DLD’s:

Information collection is the digital skill of gathering and locating information effectively and efficiently in an electronic context. It is the ability to recognize information needs, access, understand and use information by employing the Internet, professional organization databases and search engines. (Catts and Lau 2008 ; Nelson et al. 2011 ; Mioduser et al. 2008 ; Gilster 1997 ; Lau and Yuen 2014 ; Ala-Mutka 2011 ); Information evaluation stands for the attitude towards the retrieved information, which determines the worthiness of the collected information. It is the ability to evaluate the quality, reliability, relevance, timeliness, completeness, credibility, usefulness, and efficiency of digital resources. (Eshet-Alkali and Amichai-Hamburger 2004 ; Brouwer 1996 ; Jenkins 2009 ; Lau and Yuen 2014 ; Nelson et al. 2011 ); Information management denotes data organization and storage for posterior fruitful usage. It is the ability to save, retrieve and to tag digital information while including knowledge about copyright and plagiarism issues (Dudeney et al. 2014 ; Nelson et al. 2011 ; Mioduser et al. 2008 ). More specifically, it represents the ability to protect personal data and information from threats such as unauthorized access, destruction, identity theft, impersonation, unauthorized alteration of data, or fictitious creation (Lau and Yuen 2014 ; Nelson et al. 2011 ); Information processing relates to the posterior preparation and arrangement of the information usage in its format: text, sound, image, etc. It is the ability to use ICT to design or create new information from information already acquired (Lau and Yuen 2014 ); Teamwork refers to the work done by several peers in the process of learning, while sharing information, communicating and participating in given tests, with each party learning, collaborating, and creating a single joint common item. Differently stated, it is the ability to work with others (instructor and peers) toward a common intended learning goal through, discourse, collaboration, cooperation, RBL and PBL. (Jung and Latchem 2011 ; Harasim 2012 ; Panitz 1999 ; Jenkins 2009 ; Nelson et al. 2011 ); Integrity awareness relates to the ethical use of gathered information, it involves integrity, honesty and fairness in searching and collecting information, as well as to how new knowledge based on it is created;

Social responsibility : refers to the quality of being a moral and reliable person, involving proper behaviour in the digital context. In other words, it represents understanding the social and ethical implications/consequences of the use of digital resources.

As these SDDL’s have been shown to represent the various domains of digital literacy, their level points to one’s digital readiness.

2.1.4 Purpose of the study

The research was designed to address the gap in the research literature by implementing an empirical measurement of student teachers’ perceptions of their level of Digital Literacy and Digital Readiness. The contribution of this study is the presentation of the findings of a survey that examines the Digital literacy and Digital Readiness of a representative sample of students from five colleges in Israel. The choice of pre-service teachers, i.e., undergraduate students who are in their basic training stage, is important in light of systemic reforms in Israel and worldwide, which promote the adaptation of educational systems to the digital age (Tsybulsky and Levin 2017 ). In Israel, studies have been conducted to assess the digital skills of various population groups (Eshet-Alkalai and Chajut 2010 ). Most of them examine specific issues related to the ethnic digital division in the country (Lissitsa and On 2014 ), the use of the Internet by different ethnic groups (Lissitsa and Chachashvili-Bolotin 2014 ), or the development of a DL measuring tool (Kurtz and Peled 2016a ). Nonetheless, none has examined the broad aspect of DL as the current research does.

The purpose of this research study is to gauge the DL and DR of education students, who are graduate students and pre-service teachers in Israeli colleges. More specifically, this research employs a valid and reliable measure of digital literacy. The Self-Report Digital Literacies (SRDL) is based on a previous research by Kurtz and Peled ( 2016a ), who as we saw earlier identify seven digital literacy domains (SDDLs).

2.2 Objective and research questions

This study has several objectives. It investigates pre-service teachers’ self-perception of ICT, (it measures students’ self-perception of the SDDLs) and its subsequent integration in their professional practices. It investigates pre-service ICT readiness and compares it to their actual ICT knowledge. It presents a structural model, which predicts pre-service teacher preparedness to teach embracing digital literacy practices.

2.3 Research questions

What is the perceived level of digital literacy of students?

Are there differences in digital literacy types and in student’s digital readiness?

Do background characteristics predict the level of digital readiness?

3.1 Survey instrument

The questionnaire used in this study - the Self-Report Digital Literacies (SRDL), consists of 54 statements (see Appendix 1), which are divided into seven domains (see Table 1 ). The sample comprises 1265 students.

3.2 Development of the research instrument

The research instrument - The Self-Report Digital Literacies (SRDL) was initially developed by Kurtz and Peled ( 2016b ) in a two phase process: Phase 1 - Based on an exhaustive literature research, a list of DLDs and PSs was compiled (see Table 1 ) and distributed for pre-validation review and comments to six expert researchers in the educational technology field, and to seven graduate students of ICT studying at the College of Academic Studies in Israel. The experts and the students were asked to provide a critical review of the DLDs and PSs. More specifically, they were requested to respond to open-ended questions concerning the fitness, appropriateness, missing items, revision, rephrasing, and clarity of the items. Their comments were analyzed by the research team to determine what revisions of the DLDs (if any) were to be included in the survey. Based on respondent input, a final set of seven DLD and sixty-five Likert-type scale items from 1 to 5 was listed. The 64 items survey was administered to 1889 students at the Western Galilee College in Israel. The analysis of the data showed that 10 items had low compatibility and were accordingly excluded. Phase 2 – the remaining 54 PSs were retested for reliability showing a relatively high Cronbach’s alpha values as it can be attested in Table 1 . The current report relates to phase 2 of the research.

The seven domains (and the number of statements pertaining to each domain in parentheses) are:

(a) information collection (12), which refers to questions such as how to objectively search effectively, how to distinguish between different types of search, sources and information; (b) information evaluation (5), which includes questions on judging the information gathered and assessing its credibility; (c) information management (3), which involves inquiring into personal storage for posterior retrieval; (d) information processing (8), which concerns assessing, interpreting, analysing and synthesizing information from multiple sources for later usage; (e) teamwork (8), which engages the query on participation levels of different peers in a studying task; (f) integrity awareness (15), which asks on the concern of ethical, moral and social consequences of usage, or mis-usage, of digital information; and (g) social responsibility (3), which gathers information on proper behaviour in the social digital environment. All items are assigned 5-point Likert scale from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( to a very large extent ).

A further evaluation of students’ digital readiness is based on Horrigan’s ( 2016 ) work. For the purpose of this study, we categorize the original seven domains of the digital literacy questionnaire (Kurtz and Peled 2016a ) into four types of digital readiness: (a) basic order readiness (information collection, information processing); (b) advanced order readiness (information management, information evaluation); (c) preparedness for teamwork (teamwork); and (d) ethical readiness (integrity awareness, social responsibility). The background characteristics of the participants are examined using the following questions: (a) school of study; (b) degree; (c) gender; (d) age; and (e) sense of control of Internet technologies.

3.3 Procedure/information collection and participants

We used an online questionnaire to anonymously collect information from five teachers’ colleges/colleges of education in the north, centre, and south of Israel. The recruitment was done with the assistance of the different institution’s managements, which sent the questionnaires via email to their students. A total of 1265 students filled out the questionnaire. 481 students (38.0%) belonged to college A, 375 (29.6%) to college B, 165 (13%) to college C, 133 (10.5%) to college D, and 90 (7.1%) to college E. 21 students (1.8%) did not mark their college. The response rate varied from 37.2% (college A), 75% (college B), 16.5% (college C), 4% (college D), and l6.6% (college E); 57.5% were undergraduate students and 38.5% were graduate students. Most of the respondents (79%) were women. The average age was 33.4 ( SD  = 10.4; M  = 32).

The analysis of undergraduate student’s Self-Report Digital Literacies (SRDL) questionnaire shows the following findings. Concerning (a) information collection (12), results show that most of the respondents feel confident with their ability to collect and retrieve digital information. More than 70% answered they know how to collect information, how to search effectively, and can define the objective of the search. Furthermore, only one third of the respondents expressed their lack of knowledge when identifying file types and defining different types of digital environments (for example blogs, pictures, video clips). Overall, these findings indicate that most participants possess basic information research and retrieval skills.

Concerning (b) information evaluation (5), most of the respondents self-reported a positive ability to validate online information. 77% reported being able to judge the retrieved information and more than 60% testified accuracy of information skills. Only 20% admitted being unable to determine the specific information required for a specific task. This last finding is disturbing as it means that some students perform learning tasks without knowing what is expected from them in terms of allocating relevant learning information.

As to (c) information management (3), the findings show that most of the participants know how to manage their collected data. But contradictorily, only 65% acknowledge the ability to retrieve stored information. Overall, these findings indicate that most participants identify themselves as digitally literate agents in the information management domain.

Undergraduate students self-report on (d) information processing (8) findings show that a small majority (only 67%) can analyse data from multiple sources and synthesize it, 24% reported some lower ability concerning this, and only 9% possesses no ability whatsoever.

Answers on (e) teamwork (8) show a positive preparedness in joint tasks (84% respondents). 82% of the participants reported readiness to share their thoughts and insights with their peers. On the other hand, 46% claim that they prefer to work independently and 30% say they do not like to work with peers on a joint task.

Most of the respondents reported (f) integrity awareness (15). Most of the participants were aware of copyright matters and provided evidence that they will not misuse retrieved information. On the other hand, almost half of the respondents say that they do not cite their sources or that they are aware of the requirement by Creative Commons concept, as 30% of them admitted having downloaded many music or movie files illegally.

Concerning (g) social responsibility (3) 88% of the respondents acknowledged understanding the dangers of the digital environment (for example: cyberbullying). Furthermore, more than 70% of the participants understand the different social and ethical consequences of their online activities and follow the rules of discourse and proper behaviour in social networks. Yet, despite of this high social awareness, a relatively high percentage would not take any action if coming across an inappropriate dialogue online. They would neither report it (29%), nor would they send any comment on an inappropriate dialogue online (21%).

Thus, our SDDL model clarifies the present study’s research questions. The perceived level of digital literacy among undergraduates’ students (RQ1) is high (see Table 1 ). This notwithstanding, only half of the respondents reported high levels in evaluation and information processing (see Table 2 ).

The nature of the relationship between digital literacy types (RQ2) has been calculated by correlation coefficient (Pearson). A positive, moderately significant relationship has been found between types of literacy (Table 2 ). It has been also found that there is a strong and positive correlation between three literacies that complement students’ online behaviour: collecting, evaluating, and processing digital information.

Students’ background characteristics (RQ3) as ICT readiness predictors - the analysis shows that only one variable—studying for a degree—was significant and explained 19% of the overall level of readiness. T -tests for independent samples indicated that there was no significant difference between undergraduate and graduate students in basic and advanced readiness. However, graduate students reported readiness for high-level teamwork, ( F(1,170) = −3.527, p < .005 ), and high ethical readiness ( F(1,180) = −6477, p < .005 ), compared to undergraduate students.

Due to the results obtained, a new question arises: To what extent are students digitally ready to teach in the digital age? Thus, for this purpose and based on Horrigan ( 2016 ), the following four types-categorization of digital readiness was analysed: (a) basic order readiness (information collection, information processing); (b) advanced order readiness (information management, information evaluation); (c) preparedness for teamwork (teamwork); and (d) ethical readiness (integrity awareness, social responsibility). The general results are presented on Table 3 . Students reported a high level of readiness for teamwork and ethical conduct relevant to both offline and online environments. On the other hand, the participants reported a medium to a low level of preparedness for the types of preparedness relevant to an online environment only: readiness of a basic and advanced order.

Furthermore, the findings show a distinction between the types of preparedness that have developed in the digital sphere and those that existed in the pre-digital sphere: of the four types of digital readiness: (a) basic order readiness (information collection, information processing); (b) advanced order readiness (information management, information evaluation); (c) preparedness for teamwork (teamwork); and (d) ethical readiness (integrity awareness, social responsibility) students report a high level of readiness for teamwork and ethical conduct relevant to both offline and online environments. On the other hand, the participants reported a medium to low level of preparedness for the types of preparedness relevant to an online environment only: readiness of a basic and advanced order. These findings point to the fact that pre-service teachers are in a transit phase from digital immigrants to digital natives (Prensky 2001 ). Ten years ago Lei ( 2009 ) has pointed out that digital immigrants preservice teachers lack the knowledge, skills, and experiences necessary to integrate technology into classrooms, so that it assists them in their teaching, and helps their students in their learning. The fact that teachers fully recognize the importance of doing so, may suggest that noticeable changes should have been perceived a decade later. Li et al. ( 2016 ), found that despite digital native teachers’ great comfort with basic technology, they have not yet integrated it effectively into their teaching. A more effective training is still needed for them to be able to better integrate technology into the classroom. In addition, some of the digital immigrant teachers lack basic technology skills, and therefore need more hands-on practice in basic technology operations. Kurniawati et al. ( 2018 ) found that both native and immigrant digital teachers were at an adaptation stage in terms of digital literacy, which is reflected by their utilization of digital media in assisting students’ learning. These evidences support our findings, and lead to the conclusion that it may take another decade to witness true digital immigrants in teaching.

5 Discussion

The purpose of this study is to assess pre-service teachers’ undergraduates self-reported level of digital literacy and readiness, while focusing on Israeli college students majoring in education. In this study, we have expanded the areas of DL testing into seven different domains of literacy (SDDL: (a) information collection (12), (b) information evaluation (5), (c) information management (3), (d) information processing (8), (e) teamwork (8), (f) integrity awareness (15), and (g) social responsibility (3), as opposed to previous studies that have only examined specific issues such as computer literacy (Wilkinson 2006 ) or information literacy (Buzzetto-Hollywood et al. 2018 ).

Although undergraduates perceive themselves as digitally oriented and prepared, they lack the critical means to analyse and judge gathered information and its subsequent management and retrieval. This conclusion may help instructors, institutions, and policymakers to adapt the teaching curricula accordingly in order to fill this gap. In other words, there is a gap between self-perception and actual implementation of digital information. This in turn, may require the construction of specific training and development processes. The lack of proper skills may be further origin a deficit in the instruction of future generations and may also affect their future employment integration in modern society.

Summing up, the twenty-first century world of work and academia (specifically teachers), demands that higher education institutions train graduates who could integrate into the workforce. This study offers a comprehensive tool for assessing the different dimensions of DL and for further understanding DR. The SDDL research tool helps considering undergraduates DL levels. Accordingly, instructors may design their course for the development of pre-service teachers’ digital skills, which in turn, should facilitate their optimal integration as leaders in Israel’s education system. It is important to point out that pre-service teachers (undergraduate students) lack both the experience that in-service teachers have (graduate students) in teamwork and the understanding of ethical issues related to online activity. Thus, it seems that currently novice teachers lack some of the important twenty-first century skills they are expected to teach their future students.

The primary revelation during COVID-19 is the importance of digital readiness and a high level of digital literacy. While the pandemic is disrupting socio-economic activities, it is, fortunately, happening at a time of rapid digitalization. The future of education was already changing before COVID-19. In 2010, the Israeli ministry of education launched the National ICT Program to promote pedagogy and learn in schools using information and communication technologies and their assimilation into the curriculum. In light of the National ICT Program, new programs were introduced to the teacher’s colleges curriculum to prepare the pre-service and in-service teachers to teach according to the program’s objectives. The pandemic has accelerated the pace, need, and uptake of technology in teaching. The sudden necessity for online teaching revealed the need for digital readiness. Reports from schools indicate that many teachers were not ready and did not have the relevant digital literacy to change their teaching methods. The Self-Report Digital Literacies (SRDL) questionnaire used in this research is a simple to use the research tool to help teacher training colleges and schools identify their teacher’s strengths and weaknesses concerning digital readiness and digital literacy. Thus can make the necessary changes to their course plans to accommodate challenges generated by COVID-19 lockdown.

5.1 Practical implications

The results show that students studying for a degree in education are partially prepared for optimal functioning in the world of advanced technologies, as well as for the era of the ‘knowledge society’. The present research findings emphasize the need to train teaching staff in higher education institutions in order to give them the best preparation as teachers of the future. It seems that if training for the digital age is not done in a planned and methodical manner, the digital difference will widen, which may affect the performance of graduates in society. Even though prior studies indicate participants tend to overestimate their DL skills, pre-service teachers are not that confident of their basic DL skills. This lack of confidence, based as it may be on potential overestimation, calls for some additional education in teachers DL. In addition, the findings of the study, which offer an updated rating for the examination of DL types, can serve as a tool for teaching staff in institutions of higher education. It can also assist policymakers to develop the necessary types of DL required for students in institutions of higher learning.

5.2 Limitations and further research

The objective of this research is to draw conclusions from a sample (random or chosen). Nonetheless, a major limitation of the study stems from the characteristics of the research population, which only includes students in education. In further studies, the sample and the populations examined may be expanded to other academic institutions and fields of study. Another limitation is that it is a self-reporting correlative study. The literature on information literacy assessment repeatedly shows that self-reporting is not a substitute for the examination of people’s actual information management skills (Mahmood 2016 ). A major complaint against self-assessment is the lack of validity of this measure, as people tend to inflate their information skills. In this context, a recent study has found that participants are overconfident in reporting their competencies compared to their actual performance. Such behaviour is referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect (Schlösser et al. 2013 ). One potential risk of this effect is that people with below-proficient skills are unlikely to obtain assistance if they do not recognize their skill’s limitations (Gross and Latham 2012 ). these individuals are not motivated to undergo training and may be disengaged from classes.

In addition, the questionnaire does not include an actual examination of digital skills and a comparison thereof to perceived skills. It is recommended to incorporate a practical knowledge test that includes scenarios that require respondents to demonstrate their DL in practice. As part of this research team’s ongoing research, we intend to add a practical knowledge test that capable of deepening our understanding of the field.

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Appendix 1: Digital literacies survey

Instructions: This questionnaire is designed to learn about your digital literacies by using the following scale: 1. Strongly disagree; 2. Somewhat disagree; 3. Neither disagree nor agree; 4. Somewhat agree; 5. Strongly agree.

1. Data Collection

2. Evaluation of Data

3. Data Management

4. Data processing

5. Teamwork

6. Integrity awareness

7. Social Responsibility

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Peled, Y. Pre-service teacher’s self-perception of digital literacy: The case of Israel. Educ Inf Technol 26 , 2879–2896 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10387-x

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Issue Date : May 2021

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A systematic review on digital literacy

Hasan tinmaz.

1 AI & Big Data Department, Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Yoo-Taek Lee

2 Endicott College of International Studies, Woosong University, Daejeon, South Korea

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici

3 Department of Economics and Economic Policies, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Hasnan Baber

4 Abu Dhabi School of Management, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Associated Data

The authors present the articles used for the study in “ Appendix A ”.

The purpose of this study is to discover the main themes and categories of the research studies regarding digital literacy. To serve this purpose, the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier were searched with four keyword-combinations and final forty-three articles were included in the dataset. The researchers applied a systematic literature review method to the dataset. The preliminary findings demonstrated that there is a growing prevalence of digital literacy articles starting from the year 2013. The dominant research methodology of the reviewed articles is qualitative. The four major themes revealed from the qualitative content analysis are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and digital thinking. Under each theme, the categories and their frequencies are analysed. Recommendations for further research and for real life implementations are generated.

Introduction

The extant literature on digital literacy, skills and competencies is rich in definitions and classifications, but there is still no consensus on the larger themes and subsumed themes categories. (Heitin, 2016 ). To exemplify, existing inventories of Internet skills suffer from ‘incompleteness and over-simplification, conceptual ambiguity’ (van Deursen et al., 2015 ), and Internet skills are only a part of digital skills. While there is already a plethora of research in this field, this research paper hereby aims to provide a general framework of digital areas and themes that can best describe digital (cap)abilities in the novel context of Industry 4.0 and the accelerated pandemic-triggered digitalisation. The areas and themes can represent the starting point for drafting a contemporary digital literacy framework.

Sousa and Rocha ( 2019 ) explained that there is a stake of digital skills for disruptive digital business, and they connect it to the latest developments, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The topic is even more important given the large disparities in digital literacy across regions (Tinmaz et al., 2022 ). More precisely, digital inequalities encompass skills, along with access, usage and self-perceptions. These inequalities need to be addressed, as they are credited with a ‘potential to shape life chances in multiple ways’ (Robinson et al., 2015 ), e.g., academic performance, labour market competitiveness, health, civic and political participation. Steps have been successfully taken to address physical access gaps, but skills gaps are still looming (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010a ). Moreover, digital inequalities have grown larger due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they influenced the very state of health of the most vulnerable categories of population or their employability in a time when digital skills are required (Baber et al., 2022 ; Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ).

The systematic review the researchers propose is a useful updated instrument of classification and inventory for digital literacy. Considering the latest developments in the economy and in line with current digitalisation needs, digitally literate population may assist policymakers in various fields, e.g., education, administration, healthcare system, and managers of companies and other concerned organisations that need to stay competitive and to employ competitive workforce. Therefore, it is indispensably vital to comprehend the big picture of digital literacy related research.

Literature review

Since the advent of Digital Literacy, scholars have been concerned with identifying and classifying the various (cap)abilities related to its operation. Using the most cited academic papers in this stream of research, several classifications of digital-related literacies, competencies, and skills emerged.

Digital literacies

Digital literacy, which is one of the challenges of integration of technology in academic courses (Blau, Shamir-Inbal & Avdiel, 2020 ), has been defined in the current literature as the competencies and skills required for navigating a fragmented and complex information ecosystem (Eshet, 2004 ). A ‘Digital Literacy Framework’ was designed by Eshet-Alkalai ( 2012 ), comprising six categories: (a) photo-visual thinking (understanding and using visual information); (b) real-time thinking (simultaneously processing a variety of stimuli); (c) information thinking (evaluating and combining information from multiple digital sources); (d) branching thinking (navigating in non-linear hyper-media environments); (e) reproduction thinking (creating outcomes using technological tools by designing new content or remixing existing digital content); (f) social-emotional thinking (understanding and applying cyberspace rules). According to Heitin ( 2016 ), digital literacy groups the following clusters: (a) finding and consuming digital content; (b) creating digital content; (c) communicating or sharing digital content. Hence, the literature describes the digital literacy in many ways by associating a set of various technical and non-technical elements.

Digital competencies

The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.1.), the most recent framework proposed by the European Union, which is currently under review and undergoing an updating process, contains five competency areas: (a) information and data literacy, (b) communication and collaboration, (c) digital content creation, (d) safety, and (e) problem solving (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ). Digital competency had previously been described in a technical fashion by Ferrari ( 2012 ) as a set comprising information skills, communication skills, content creation skills, safety skills, and problem-solving skills, which later outlined the areas of competence in DigComp 2.1, too.

Digital skills

Ng ( 2012 ) pointed out the following three categories of digital skills: (a) technological (using technological tools); (b) cognitive (thinking critically when managing information); (c) social (communicating and socialising). A set of Internet skill was suggested by Van Deursen and Van Dijk ( 2009 , 2010b ), which contains: (a) operational skills (basic skills in using internet technology), (b) formal Internet skills (navigation and orientation skills); (c) information Internet skills (fulfilling information needs), and (d) strategic Internet skills (using the internet to reach goals). In 2014, the same authors added communication and content creation skills to the initial framework (van Dijk & van Deursen). Similarly, Helsper and Eynon ( 2013 ) put forward a set of four digital skills: technical, social, critical, and creative skills. Furthermore, van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ) built a set of items and factors to measure Internet skills: operational, information navigation, social, creative, mobile. More recent literature (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) divides digital skills into seven core categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

It is worth mentioning that the various methodologies used to classify digital literacy are overlapping or non-exhaustive, which confirms the conceptual ambiguity mentioned by van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ).

Digital thinking

Thinking skills (along with digital skills) have been acknowledged to be a significant element of digital literacy in the educational process context (Ferrari, 2012 ). In fact, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation are at the very core of DigComp. Information and Communication Technology as a support for thinking is a learning objective in any school curriculum. In the same vein, analytical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking, which help solve problems, are yet other concerns of educators in the Industry 4.0 (Ozkan-Ozen & Kazancoglu, 2021 ).

However, we have recently witnessed a shift of focus from learning how to use information and communication technologies to using it while staying safe in the cyber-environment and being aware of alternative facts. Digital thinking would encompass identifying fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers (Sulzer, 2018 ). Not least important, concern about cybersecurity has grown especially in times of political, social or economic turmoil, such as the elections or the Covid-19 crisis (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

Ultimately, this systematic review paper focuses on the following major research questions as follows:

• Research question 1: What is the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 2: What are the research methods for digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 3: What are the main themes in digital literacy related papers?
• Research question 4: What are the concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers?

This study employed the systematic review method where the authors scrutinized the existing literature around the major research question of digital literacy. As Uman ( 2011 ) pointed, in systematic literature review, the findings of the earlier research are examined for the identification of consistent and repetitive themes. The systematic review method differs from literature review with its well managed and highly organized qualitative scrutiny processes where researchers tend to cover less materials from fewer number of databases to write their literature review (Kowalczyk & Truluck, 2013 ; Robinson & Lowe, 2015 ).

Data collection

To address major research objectives, the following five important databases are selected due to their digital literacy focused research dominance: 1. WoS/Clarivate Analytics, 2. Proquest Central; 3. Emerald Management Journals; 4. Jstor Business College Collections; 5. Scopus/Elsevier.

The search was made in the second half of June 2021, in abstract and key words written in English language. We only kept research articles and book chapters (herein referred to as papers). Our purpose was to identify a set of digital literacy areas, or an inventory of such areas and topics. To serve that purpose, systematic review was utilized with the following synonym key words for the search: ‘digital literacy’, ‘digital skills’, ‘digital competence’ and ‘digital fluency’, to find the mainstream literature dealing with the topic. These key words were unfolded as a result of the consultation with the subject matter experts (two board members from Korean Digital Literacy Association and two professors from technology studies department). Below are the four key word combinations used in the search: “Digital literacy AND systematic review”, “Digital skills AND systematic review”, “Digital competence AND systematic review”, and “Digital fluency AND systematic review”.

A sequential systematic search was made in the five databases mentioned above. Thus, from one database to another, duplicate papers were manually excluded in a cascade manner to extract only unique results and to make the research smoother to conduct. At this stage, we kept 47 papers. Further exclusion criteria were applied. Thus, only full-text items written in English were selected, and in doing so, three papers were excluded (no full text available), and one other paper was excluded because it was not written in English, but in Spanish. Therefore, we investigated a total number of 43 papers, as shown in Table ​ Table1. 1 . “ Appendix A ” shows the list of these papers with full references.

Number of papers identified sequentially after applying all inclusion and exclusion criteria

Data analysis

The 43 papers selected after the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, respectively, were reviewed the materials independently by two researchers who were from two different countries. The researchers identified all topics pertaining to digital literacy, as they appeared in the papers. Next, a third researcher independently analysed these findings by excluded duplicates A qualitative content analysis was manually performed by calculating the frequency of major themes in all papers, where the raw data was compared and contrasted (Fraenkel et al., 2012 ). All three reviewers independently list the words and how the context in which they appeared and then the three reviewers collectively decided for how it should be categorized. Lastly, it is vital to remind that literature review of this article was written after the identification of the themes appeared as a result of our qualitative analyses. Therefore, the authors decided to shape the literature review structure based on the themes.

As an answer to the first research question (the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers), Fig.  1 demonstrates the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers. It is seen that there is an increasing trend about the digital literacy papers.

Yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers

Research question number two (The research methods for digital literacy related papers) concentrates on what research methods are employed for these digital literacy related papers. As Fig.  2 shows, most of the papers were using the qualitative method. Not stated refers to book chapters.

Research methods used in the reviewed articles

When forty-three articles were analysed for the main themes as in research question number three (The main themes in digital literacy related papers), the overall findings were categorized around four major themes: (i) literacies, (ii) competencies, (iii) skills, and (iv) thinking. Under every major theme, the categories were listed and explained as in research question number four (The concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers).

The authors utilized an overt categorization for the depiction of these major themes. For example, when the ‘creativity’ was labelled as a skill, the authors also categorized it under the ‘skills’ theme. Similarly, when ‘creativity’ was mentioned as a competency, the authors listed it under the ‘competencies’ theme. Therefore, it is possible to recognize the same finding under different major themes.

Major theme 1: literacies

Digital literacy being the major concern of this paper was observed to be blatantly mentioned in five papers out forty-three. One of these articles described digital literacy as the human proficiencies to live, learn and work in the current digital society. In addition to these five articles, two additional papers used the same term as ‘critical digital literacy’ by describing it as a person’s or a society’s accessibility and assessment level interaction with digital technologies to utilize and/or create information. Table ​ Table2 2 summarizes the major categories under ‘Literacies’ major theme.

Categories (more than one occurrence) under 'literacies' major theme

Computer literacy, media literacy and cultural literacy were the second most common literacy (n = 5). One of the article branches computer literacy as tool (detailing with software and hardware uses) and resource (focusing on information processing capacity of a computer) literacies. Cultural literacy was emphasized as a vital element for functioning in an intercultural team on a digital project.

Disciplinary literacy (n = 4) was referring to utilizing different computer programs (n = 2) or technical gadgets (n = 2) with a specific emphasis on required cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills to be able to work in any digital context (n = 3), serving for the using (n = 2), creating and applying (n = 2) digital literacy in real life.

Data literacy, technology literacy and multiliteracy were the third frequent categories (n = 3). The ‘multiliteracy’ was referring to the innate nature of digital technologies, which have been infused into many aspects of human lives.

Last but not least, Internet literacy, mobile literacy, web literacy, new literacy, personal literacy and research literacy were discussed in forty-three article findings. Web literacy was focusing on being able to connect with people on the web (n = 2), discover the web content (especially the navigation on a hyper-textual platform), and learn web related skills through practical web experiences. Personal literacy was highlighting digital identity management. Research literacy was not only concentrating on conducting scientific research ability but also finding available scholarship online.

Twenty-four other categories are unfolded from the results sections of forty-three articles. Table ​ Table3 3 presents the list of these other literacies where the authors sorted the categories in an ascending alphabetical order without any other sorting criterion. Primarily, search, tagging, filtering and attention literacies were mainly underlining their roles in information processing. Furthermore, social-structural literacy was indicated as the recognition of the social circumstances and generation of information. Another information-related literacy was pointed as publishing literacy, which is the ability to disseminate information via different digital channels.

Other mentioned categories (n = 1)

While above listed personal literacy was referring to digital identity management, network literacy was explained as someone’s social networking ability to manage the digital relationship with other people. Additionally, participatory literacy was defined as the necessary abilities to join an online team working on online content production.

Emerging technology literacy was stipulated as an essential ability to recognize and appreciate the most recent and innovative technologies in along with smart choices related to these technologies. Additionally, the critical literacy was added as an ability to make smart judgements on the cost benefit analysis of these recent technologies.

Last of all, basic, intermediate, and advanced digital assessment literacies were specified for educational institutions that are planning to integrate various digital tools to conduct instructional assessments in their bodies.

Major theme 2: competencies

The second major theme was revealed as competencies. The authors directly categorized the findings that are specified with the word of competency. Table ​ Table4 4 summarizes the entire category set for the competencies major theme.

Categories under 'competencies' major theme

The most common category was the ‘digital competence’ (n = 14) where one of the articles points to that category as ‘generic digital competence’ referring to someone’s creativity for multimedia development (video editing was emphasized). Under this broad category, the following sub-categories were associated:

• Problem solving (n = 10)
• Safety (n = 7)
• Information processing (n = 5)
• Content creation (n = 5)
• Communication (n = 2)
• Digital rights (n = 1)
• Digital emotional intelligence (n = 1)
• Digital teamwork (n = 1)
• Big data utilization (n = 1)
• Artificial Intelligence utilization (n = 1)
• Virtual leadership (n = 1)
• Self-disruption (in along with the pace of digitalization) (n = 1)

Like ‘digital competency’, five additional articles especially coined the term as ‘digital competence as a life skill’. Deeper analysis demonstrated the following points: social competences (n = 4), communication in mother tongue (n = 3) and foreign language (n = 2), entrepreneurship (n = 3), civic competence (n = 2), fundamental science (n = 1), technology (n = 1) and mathematics (n = 1) competences, learning to learn (n = 1) and self-initiative (n = 1).

Moreover, competencies were linked to workplace digital competencies in three articles and highlighted as significant for employability (n = 3) and ‘economic engagement’ (n = 3). Digital competencies were also detailed for leisure (n = 2) and communication (n = 2). Furthermore, two articles pointed digital competencies as an inter-cultural competency and one as a cross-cultural competency. Lastly, the ‘digital nativity’ (n = 1) was clarified as someone’s innate competency of being able to feel contented and satisfied with digital technologies.

Major theme 3: skills

The third major observed theme was ‘skills’, which was dominantly gathered around information literacy skills (n = 19) and information and communication technologies skills (n = 18). Table ​ Table5 5 demonstrates the categories with more than one occurrence.

Categories under 'skills' major theme

Table ​ Table6 6 summarizes the sub-categories of the two most frequent categories of ‘skills’ major theme. The information literacy skills noticeably concentrate on the steps of information processing; evaluation (n = 6), utilization (n = 4), finding (n = 3), locating (n = 2) information. Moreover, the importance of trial/error process, being a lifelong learner, feeling a need for information and so forth were evidently listed under this sub-category. On the other hand, ICT skills were grouped around cognitive and affective domains. For instance, while technical skills in general and use of social media, coding, multimedia, chat or emailing in specific were reported in cognitive domain, attitude, intention, and belief towards ICT were mentioned as the elements of affective domain.

Sub-categories under ‘information literacy’ and ‘ICT’ skills

Communication skills (n = 9) were multi-dimensional for different societies, cultures, and globalized contexts, requiring linguistic skills. Collaboration skills (n = 9) are also recurrently cited with an explicit emphasis for virtual platforms.

‘Ethics for digital environment’ encapsulated ethical use of information (n = 4) and different technologies (n = 2), knowing digital laws (n = 2) and responsibilities (n = 2) in along with digital rights and obligations (n = 1), having digital awareness (n = 1), following digital etiquettes (n = 1), treating other people with respect (n = 1) including no cyber-bullying (n = 1) and no stealing or damaging other people (n = 1).

‘Digital fluency’ involved digital access (n = 2) by using different software and hardware (n = 2) in online platforms (n = 1) or communication tools (n = 1) or within programming environments (n = 1). Digital fluency also underlined following recent technological advancements (n = 1) and knowledge (n = 1) including digital health and wellness (n = 1) dimension.

‘Social intelligence’ related to understanding digital culture (n = 1), the concept of digital exclusion (n = 1) and digital divide (n = 3). ‘Research skills’ were detailed with searching academic information (n = 3) on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus (n = 2) and their citation, summarization, and quotation (n = 2).

‘Digital teaching’ was described as a skill (n = 2) in Table ​ Table4 4 whereas it was also labelled as a competence (n = 1) as shown in Table ​ Table3. 3 . Similarly, while learning to learn (n = 1) was coined under competencies in Table ​ Table3, 3 , digital learning (n = 2, Table ​ Table4) 4 ) and life-long learning (n = 1, Table ​ Table5) 5 ) were stated as learning related skills. Moreover, learning was used with the following three terms: learning readiness (n = 1), self-paced learning (n = 1) and learning flexibility (n = 1).

Table ​ Table7 7 shows other categories listed below the ‘skills’ major theme. The list covers not only the software such as GIS, text mining, mapping, or bibliometric analysis programs but also the conceptual skills such as the fourth industrial revolution and information management.

Categories (one-time occurrence) under 'skills' major theme

Major theme 4: thinking

The last identified major theme was the different types of ‘thinking’. As Table ​ Table8 8 shows, ‘critical thinking’ was the most frequent thinking category (n = 4). Except computational thinking, the other categories were not detailed.

Categories under ‘thinking’ major theme

Computational thinking (n = 3) was associated with the general logic of how a computer works and sub-categorized into the following steps; construction of the problem (n = 3), abstraction (n = 1), disintegration of the problem (n = 2), data collection, (n = 2), data analysis (n = 2), algorithmic design (n = 2), parallelization & iteration (n = 1), automation (n = 1), generalization (n = 1), and evaluation (n = 2).

A transversal analysis of digital literacy categories reveals the following fields of digital literacy application:

• Technological advancement (IT, ICT, Industry 4.0, IoT, text mining, GIS, bibliometric analysis, mapping data, technology, AI, big data)
• Networking (Internet, web, connectivity, network, safety)
• Information (media, news, communication)
• Creative-cultural industries (culture, publishing, film, TV, leisure, content creation)
• Academia (research, documentation, library)
• Citizenship (participation, society, social intelligence, awareness, politics, rights, legal use, ethics)
• Education (life skills, problem solving, teaching, learning, education, lifelong learning)
• Professional life (work, teamwork, collaboration, economy, commerce, leadership, decision making)
• Personal level (critical thinking, evaluation, analytical thinking, innovative thinking)

This systematic review on digital literacy concentrated on forty-three articles from the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier. The initial results revealed that there is an increasing trend on digital literacy focused academic papers. Research work in digital literacy is critical in a context of disruptive digital business, and more recently, the pandemic-triggered accelerated digitalisation (Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ; Sousa & Rocha 2019 ). Moreover, most of these papers were employing qualitative research methods. The raw data of these articles were analysed qualitatively using systematic literature review to reveal major themes and categories. Four major themes that appeared are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and thinking.

Whereas the mainstream literature describes digital literacy as a set of photo-visual, real-time, information, branching, reproduction and social-emotional thinking (Eshet-Alkalai, 2012 ) or as a set of precise specific operations, i.e., finding, consuming, creating, communicating and sharing digital content (Heitin, 2016 ), this study reveals that digital literacy revolves around and is in connection with the concepts of computer literacy, media literacy, cultural literacy or disciplinary literacy. In other words, the present systematic review indicates that digital literacy is far broader than specific tasks, englobing the entire sphere of computer operation and media use in a cultural context.

The digital competence yardstick, DigComp (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ) suggests that the main digital competencies cover information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. Similarly, the findings of this research place digital competencies in relation to problem solving, safety, information processing, content creation and communication. Therefore, the findings of the systematic literature review are, to a large extent, in line with the existing framework used in the European Union.

The investigation of the main keywords associated with digital skills has revealed that information literacy, ICT, communication, collaboration, digital content creation, research and decision-making skill are the most representative. In a structured way, the existing literature groups these skills in technological, cognitive, and social (Ng, 2012 ) or, more extensively, into operational, formal, information Internet, strategic, communication and content creation (van Dijk & van Deursen, 2014 ). In time, the literature has become richer in frameworks, and prolific authors have improved their results. As such, more recent research (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) use the following categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

Whereas digital thinking was observed to be mostly related with critical thinking and computational thinking, DigComp connects it with critical thinking, creativity, and innovation, on the one hand, and researchers highlight fake news, misinformation, cybersecurity, and echo chambers as exponents of digital thinking, on the other hand (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

This systematic review research study looks ahead to offer an initial step and guideline for the development of a more contemporary digital literacy framework including digital literacy major themes and factors. The researchers provide the following recommendations for both researchers and practitioners.

Recommendations for prospective research

By considering the major qualitative research trend, it seems apparent that more quantitative research-oriented studies are needed. Although it requires more effort and time, mixed method studies will help understand digital literacy holistically.

As digital literacy is an umbrella term for many different technologies, specific case studies need be designed, such as digital literacy for artificial intelligence or digital literacy for drones’ usage.

Digital literacy affects different areas of human lives, such as education, business, health, governance, and so forth. Therefore, different case studies could be carried out for each of these unique dimensions of our lives. For instance, it is worth investigating the role of digital literacy on lifelong learning in particular, and on education in general, as well as the digital upskilling effects on the labour market flexibility.

Further experimental studies on digital literacy are necessary to realize how certain variables (for instance, age, gender, socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities, etc.) affect this concept overtly or covertly. Moreover, the digital divide issue needs to be analysed through the lens of its main determinants.

New bibliometric analysis method can be implemented on digital literacy documents to reveal more information on how these works are related or centred on what major topic. This visual approach will assist to realize the big picture within the digital literacy framework.

Recommendations for practitioners

The digital literacy stakeholders, policymakers in education and managers in private organizations, need to be aware that there are many dimensions and variables regarding the implementation of digital literacy. In that case, stakeholders must comprehend their beneficiaries or the participants more deeply to increase the effect of digital literacy related activities. For example, critical thinking and problem-solving skills and abilities are mentioned to affect digital literacy. Hence, stakeholders have to initially understand whether the participants have enough entry level critical thinking and problem solving.

Development of digital literacy for different groups of people requires more energy, since each group might require a different set of skills, abilities, or competencies. Hence, different subject matter experts, such as technologists, instructional designers, content experts, should join the team.

It is indispensably vital to develop different digital frameworks for different technologies (basic or advanced) or different contexts (different levels of schooling or various industries).

These frameworks should be updated regularly as digital fields are evolving rapidly. Every year, committees should gather around to understand new technological trends and decide whether they should address the changes into their frameworks.

Understanding digital literacy in a thorough manner can enable decision makers to correctly implement and apply policies addressing the digital divide that is reflected onto various aspects of life, e.g., health, employment, education, especially in turbulent times such as the COVID-19 pandemic is.

Lastly, it is also essential to state the study limitations. This study is limited to the analysis of a certain number of papers, obtained from using the selected keywords and databases. Therefore, an extension can be made by adding other keywords and searching other databases.

See Table ​ Management9 9 .

List of papers (n = 43) included in the qualitative analysis—ordered alphabetically by title

Author contributions

The authors worked together on the manuscript equally. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

This research is funded by Woosong University Academic Research in 2022.

Availability of data and materials

Declarations.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Hasan Tinmaz, Email: rk.ca.ttocidne@zamnith .

Yoo-Taek Lee, Email: rk.ca.usw@eelty .

Mina Fanea-Ivanovici, Email: [email protected] .

Hasnan Baber, Email: [email protected] .

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• Open access
• Published: 08 June 2022

A systematic review on digital literacy

• Hasan Tinmaz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4310-0848 1 ,
• Yoo-Taek Lee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1913-9059 2 ,
• Mina Fanea-Ivanovici   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2921-2990 3 &
• Hasnan Baber   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8951-3501 4  

Smart Learning Environments volume  9 , Article number:  21 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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The purpose of this study is to discover the main themes and categories of the research studies regarding digital literacy. To serve this purpose, the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier were searched with four keyword-combinations and final forty-three articles were included in the dataset. The researchers applied a systematic literature review method to the dataset. The preliminary findings demonstrated that there is a growing prevalence of digital literacy articles starting from the year 2013. The dominant research methodology of the reviewed articles is qualitative. The four major themes revealed from the qualitative content analysis are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and digital thinking. Under each theme, the categories and their frequencies are analysed. Recommendations for further research and for real life implementations are generated.

Introduction

The extant literature on digital literacy, skills and competencies is rich in definitions and classifications, but there is still no consensus on the larger themes and subsumed themes categories. (Heitin, 2016 ). To exemplify, existing inventories of Internet skills suffer from ‘incompleteness and over-simplification, conceptual ambiguity’ (van Deursen et al., 2015 ), and Internet skills are only a part of digital skills. While there is already a plethora of research in this field, this research paper hereby aims to provide a general framework of digital areas and themes that can best describe digital (cap)abilities in the novel context of Industry 4.0 and the accelerated pandemic-triggered digitalisation. The areas and themes can represent the starting point for drafting a contemporary digital literacy framework.

Sousa and Rocha ( 2019 ) explained that there is a stake of digital skills for disruptive digital business, and they connect it to the latest developments, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The topic is even more important given the large disparities in digital literacy across regions (Tinmaz et al., 2022 ). More precisely, digital inequalities encompass skills, along with access, usage and self-perceptions. These inequalities need to be addressed, as they are credited with a ‘potential to shape life chances in multiple ways’ (Robinson et al., 2015 ), e.g., academic performance, labour market competitiveness, health, civic and political participation. Steps have been successfully taken to address physical access gaps, but skills gaps are still looming (Van Deursen & Van Dijk, 2010a ). Moreover, digital inequalities have grown larger due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and they influenced the very state of health of the most vulnerable categories of population or their employability in a time when digital skills are required (Baber et al., 2022 ; Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ).

The systematic review the researchers propose is a useful updated instrument of classification and inventory for digital literacy. Considering the latest developments in the economy and in line with current digitalisation needs, digitally literate population may assist policymakers in various fields, e.g., education, administration, healthcare system, and managers of companies and other concerned organisations that need to stay competitive and to employ competitive workforce. Therefore, it is indispensably vital to comprehend the big picture of digital literacy related research.

Literature review

Since the advent of Digital Literacy, scholars have been concerned with identifying and classifying the various (cap)abilities related to its operation. Using the most cited academic papers in this stream of research, several classifications of digital-related literacies, competencies, and skills emerged.

Digital literacies

Digital literacy, which is one of the challenges of integration of technology in academic courses (Blau, Shamir-Inbal & Avdiel, 2020 ), has been defined in the current literature as the competencies and skills required for navigating a fragmented and complex information ecosystem (Eshet, 2004 ). A ‘Digital Literacy Framework’ was designed by Eshet-Alkalai ( 2012 ), comprising six categories: (a) photo-visual thinking (understanding and using visual information); (b) real-time thinking (simultaneously processing a variety of stimuli); (c) information thinking (evaluating and combining information from multiple digital sources); (d) branching thinking (navigating in non-linear hyper-media environments); (e) reproduction thinking (creating outcomes using technological tools by designing new content or remixing existing digital content); (f) social-emotional thinking (understanding and applying cyberspace rules). According to Heitin ( 2016 ), digital literacy groups the following clusters: (a) finding and consuming digital content; (b) creating digital content; (c) communicating or sharing digital content. Hence, the literature describes the digital literacy in many ways by associating a set of various technical and non-technical elements.

• Digital competencies

The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp 2.1.), the most recent framework proposed by the European Union, which is currently under review and undergoing an updating process, contains five competency areas: (a) information and data literacy, (b) communication and collaboration, (c) digital content creation, (d) safety, and (e) problem solving (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ). Digital competency had previously been described in a technical fashion by Ferrari ( 2012 ) as a set comprising information skills, communication skills, content creation skills, safety skills, and problem-solving skills, which later outlined the areas of competence in DigComp 2.1, too.

• Digital skills

Ng ( 2012 ) pointed out the following three categories of digital skills: (a) technological (using technological tools); (b) cognitive (thinking critically when managing information); (c) social (communicating and socialising). A set of Internet skill was suggested by Van Deursen and Van Dijk ( 2009 , 2010b ), which contains: (a) operational skills (basic skills in using internet technology), (b) formal Internet skills (navigation and orientation skills); (c) information Internet skills (fulfilling information needs), and (d) strategic Internet skills (using the internet to reach goals). In 2014, the same authors added communication and content creation skills to the initial framework (van Dijk & van Deursen). Similarly, Helsper and Eynon ( 2013 ) put forward a set of four digital skills: technical, social, critical, and creative skills. Furthermore, van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ) built a set of items and factors to measure Internet skills: operational, information navigation, social, creative, mobile. More recent literature (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) divides digital skills into seven core categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

It is worth mentioning that the various methodologies used to classify digital literacy are overlapping or non-exhaustive, which confirms the conceptual ambiguity mentioned by van Deursen et al. ( 2015 ).

• Digital thinking

Thinking skills (along with digital skills) have been acknowledged to be a significant element of digital literacy in the educational process context (Ferrari, 2012 ). In fact, critical thinking, creativity, and innovation are at the very core of DigComp. Information and Communication Technology as a support for thinking is a learning objective in any school curriculum. In the same vein, analytical thinking and interdisciplinary thinking, which help solve problems, are yet other concerns of educators in the Industry 4.0 (Ozkan-Ozen & Kazancoglu, 2021 ).

However, we have recently witnessed a shift of focus from learning how to use information and communication technologies to using it while staying safe in the cyber-environment and being aware of alternative facts. Digital thinking would encompass identifying fake news, misinformation, and echo chambers (Sulzer, 2018 ). Not least important, concern about cybersecurity has grown especially in times of political, social or economic turmoil, such as the elections or the Covid-19 crisis (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

Ultimately, this systematic review paper focuses on the following major research questions as follows:

Research question 1: What is the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers?

Research question 2: What are the research methods for digital literacy related papers?

Research question 3: What are the main themes in digital literacy related papers?

Research question 4: What are the concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers?

This study employed the systematic review method where the authors scrutinized the existing literature around the major research question of digital literacy. As Uman ( 2011 ) pointed, in systematic literature review, the findings of the earlier research are examined for the identification of consistent and repetitive themes. The systematic review method differs from literature review with its well managed and highly organized qualitative scrutiny processes where researchers tend to cover less materials from fewer number of databases to write their literature review (Kowalczyk & Truluck, 2013 ; Robinson & Lowe, 2015 ).

Data collection

To address major research objectives, the following five important databases are selected due to their digital literacy focused research dominance: 1. WoS/Clarivate Analytics, 2. Proquest Central; 3. Emerald Management Journals; 4. Jstor Business College Collections; 5. Scopus/Elsevier.

The search was made in the second half of June 2021, in abstract and key words written in English language. We only kept research articles and book chapters (herein referred to as papers). Our purpose was to identify a set of digital literacy areas, or an inventory of such areas and topics. To serve that purpose, systematic review was utilized with the following synonym key words for the search: ‘digital literacy’, ‘digital skills’, ‘digital competence’ and ‘digital fluency’, to find the mainstream literature dealing with the topic. These key words were unfolded as a result of the consultation with the subject matter experts (two board members from Korean Digital Literacy Association and two professors from technology studies department). Below are the four key word combinations used in the search: “Digital literacy AND systematic review”, “Digital skills AND systematic review”, “Digital competence AND systematic review”, and “Digital fluency AND systematic review”.

A sequential systematic search was made in the five databases mentioned above. Thus, from one database to another, duplicate papers were manually excluded in a cascade manner to extract only unique results and to make the research smoother to conduct. At this stage, we kept 47 papers. Further exclusion criteria were applied. Thus, only full-text items written in English were selected, and in doing so, three papers were excluded (no full text available), and one other paper was excluded because it was not written in English, but in Spanish. Therefore, we investigated a total number of 43 papers, as shown in Table 1 . “ Appendix A ” shows the list of these papers with full references.

Data analysis

The 43 papers selected after the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, respectively, were reviewed the materials independently by two researchers who were from two different countries. The researchers identified all topics pertaining to digital literacy, as they appeared in the papers. Next, a third researcher independently analysed these findings by excluded duplicates A qualitative content analysis was manually performed by calculating the frequency of major themes in all papers, where the raw data was compared and contrasted (Fraenkel et al., 2012 ). All three reviewers independently list the words and how the context in which they appeared and then the three reviewers collectively decided for how it should be categorized. Lastly, it is vital to remind that literature review of this article was written after the identification of the themes appeared as a result of our qualitative analyses. Therefore, the authors decided to shape the literature review structure based on the themes.

As an answer to the first research question (the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers), Fig.  1 demonstrates the yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers. It is seen that there is an increasing trend about the digital literacy papers.

Yearly distribution of digital literacy related papers

Research question number two (The research methods for digital literacy related papers) concentrates on what research methods are employed for these digital literacy related papers. As Fig.  2 shows, most of the papers were using the qualitative method. Not stated refers to book chapters.

Research methods used in the reviewed articles

When forty-three articles were analysed for the main themes as in research question number three (The main themes in digital literacy related papers), the overall findings were categorized around four major themes: (i) literacies, (ii) competencies, (iii) skills, and (iv) thinking. Under every major theme, the categories were listed and explained as in research question number four (The concentrated categories (under revealed main themes) in digital literacy related papers).

The authors utilized an overt categorization for the depiction of these major themes. For example, when the ‘creativity’ was labelled as a skill, the authors also categorized it under the ‘skills’ theme. Similarly, when ‘creativity’ was mentioned as a competency, the authors listed it under the ‘competencies’ theme. Therefore, it is possible to recognize the same finding under different major themes.

Major theme 1: literacies

Digital literacy being the major concern of this paper was observed to be blatantly mentioned in five papers out forty-three. One of these articles described digital literacy as the human proficiencies to live, learn and work in the current digital society. In addition to these five articles, two additional papers used the same term as ‘critical digital literacy’ by describing it as a person’s or a society’s accessibility and assessment level interaction with digital technologies to utilize and/or create information. Table 2 summarizes the major categories under ‘Literacies’ major theme.

Computer literacy, media literacy and cultural literacy were the second most common literacy (n = 5). One of the article branches computer literacy as tool (detailing with software and hardware uses) and resource (focusing on information processing capacity of a computer) literacies. Cultural literacy was emphasized as a vital element for functioning in an intercultural team on a digital project.

Disciplinary literacy (n = 4) was referring to utilizing different computer programs (n = 2) or technical gadgets (n = 2) with a specific emphasis on required cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills to be able to work in any digital context (n = 3), serving for the using (n = 2), creating and applying (n = 2) digital literacy in real life.

Data literacy, technology literacy and multiliteracy were the third frequent categories (n = 3). The ‘multiliteracy’ was referring to the innate nature of digital technologies, which have been infused into many aspects of human lives.

Last but not least, Internet literacy, mobile literacy, web literacy, new literacy, personal literacy and research literacy were discussed in forty-three article findings. Web literacy was focusing on being able to connect with people on the web (n = 2), discover the web content (especially the navigation on a hyper-textual platform), and learn web related skills through practical web experiences. Personal literacy was highlighting digital identity management. Research literacy was not only concentrating on conducting scientific research ability but also finding available scholarship online.

Twenty-four other categories are unfolded from the results sections of forty-three articles. Table 3 presents the list of these other literacies where the authors sorted the categories in an ascending alphabetical order without any other sorting criterion. Primarily, search, tagging, filtering and attention literacies were mainly underlining their roles in information processing. Furthermore, social-structural literacy was indicated as the recognition of the social circumstances and generation of information. Another information-related literacy was pointed as publishing literacy, which is the ability to disseminate information via different digital channels.

While above listed personal literacy was referring to digital identity management, network literacy was explained as someone’s social networking ability to manage the digital relationship with other people. Additionally, participatory literacy was defined as the necessary abilities to join an online team working on online content production.

Emerging technology literacy was stipulated as an essential ability to recognize and appreciate the most recent and innovative technologies in along with smart choices related to these technologies. Additionally, the critical literacy was added as an ability to make smart judgements on the cost benefit analysis of these recent technologies.

Last of all, basic, intermediate, and advanced digital assessment literacies were specified for educational institutions that are planning to integrate various digital tools to conduct instructional assessments in their bodies.

Major theme 2: competencies

The second major theme was revealed as competencies. The authors directly categorized the findings that are specified with the word of competency. Table 4 summarizes the entire category set for the competencies major theme.

The most common category was the ‘digital competence’ (n = 14) where one of the articles points to that category as ‘generic digital competence’ referring to someone’s creativity for multimedia development (video editing was emphasized). Under this broad category, the following sub-categories were associated:

Problem solving (n = 10)

Safety (n = 7)

Information processing (n = 5)

Content creation (n = 5)

Communication (n = 2)

Digital rights (n = 1)

Digital emotional intelligence (n = 1)

Digital teamwork (n = 1)

Big data utilization (n = 1)

Artificial Intelligence utilization (n = 1)

Virtual leadership (n = 1)

Self-disruption (in along with the pace of digitalization) (n = 1)

Like ‘digital competency’, five additional articles especially coined the term as ‘digital competence as a life skill’. Deeper analysis demonstrated the following points: social competences (n = 4), communication in mother tongue (n = 3) and foreign language (n = 2), entrepreneurship (n = 3), civic competence (n = 2), fundamental science (n = 1), technology (n = 1) and mathematics (n = 1) competences, learning to learn (n = 1) and self-initiative (n = 1).

Moreover, competencies were linked to workplace digital competencies in three articles and highlighted as significant for employability (n = 3) and ‘economic engagement’ (n = 3). Digital competencies were also detailed for leisure (n = 2) and communication (n = 2). Furthermore, two articles pointed digital competencies as an inter-cultural competency and one as a cross-cultural competency. Lastly, the ‘digital nativity’ (n = 1) was clarified as someone’s innate competency of being able to feel contented and satisfied with digital technologies.

Major theme 3: skills

The third major observed theme was ‘skills’, which was dominantly gathered around information literacy skills (n = 19) and information and communication technologies skills (n = 18). Table 5 demonstrates the categories with more than one occurrence.

Table 6 summarizes the sub-categories of the two most frequent categories of ‘skills’ major theme. The information literacy skills noticeably concentrate on the steps of information processing; evaluation (n = 6), utilization (n = 4), finding (n = 3), locating (n = 2) information. Moreover, the importance of trial/error process, being a lifelong learner, feeling a need for information and so forth were evidently listed under this sub-category. On the other hand, ICT skills were grouped around cognitive and affective domains. For instance, while technical skills in general and use of social media, coding, multimedia, chat or emailing in specific were reported in cognitive domain, attitude, intention, and belief towards ICT were mentioned as the elements of affective domain.

Communication skills (n = 9) were multi-dimensional for different societies, cultures, and globalized contexts, requiring linguistic skills. Collaboration skills (n = 9) are also recurrently cited with an explicit emphasis for virtual platforms.

‘Ethics for digital environment’ encapsulated ethical use of information (n = 4) and different technologies (n = 2), knowing digital laws (n = 2) and responsibilities (n = 2) in along with digital rights and obligations (n = 1), having digital awareness (n = 1), following digital etiquettes (n = 1), treating other people with respect (n = 1) including no cyber-bullying (n = 1) and no stealing or damaging other people (n = 1).

‘Digital fluency’ involved digital access (n = 2) by using different software and hardware (n = 2) in online platforms (n = 1) or communication tools (n = 1) or within programming environments (n = 1). Digital fluency also underlined following recent technological advancements (n = 1) and knowledge (n = 1) including digital health and wellness (n = 1) dimension.

‘Social intelligence’ related to understanding digital culture (n = 1), the concept of digital exclusion (n = 1) and digital divide (n = 3). ‘Research skills’ were detailed with searching academic information (n = 3) on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus (n = 2) and their citation, summarization, and quotation (n = 2).

‘Digital teaching’ was described as a skill (n = 2) in Table 4 whereas it was also labelled as a competence (n = 1) as shown in Table 3 . Similarly, while learning to learn (n = 1) was coined under competencies in Table 3 , digital learning (n = 2, Table 4 ) and life-long learning (n = 1, Table 5 ) were stated as learning related skills. Moreover, learning was used with the following three terms: learning readiness (n = 1), self-paced learning (n = 1) and learning flexibility (n = 1).

Table 7 shows other categories listed below the ‘skills’ major theme. The list covers not only the software such as GIS, text mining, mapping, or bibliometric analysis programs but also the conceptual skills such as the fourth industrial revolution and information management.

Major theme 4: thinking

The last identified major theme was the different types of ‘thinking’. As Table 8 shows, ‘critical thinking’ was the most frequent thinking category (n = 4). Except computational thinking, the other categories were not detailed.

Computational thinking (n = 3) was associated with the general logic of how a computer works and sub-categorized into the following steps; construction of the problem (n = 3), abstraction (n = 1), disintegration of the problem (n = 2), data collection, (n = 2), data analysis (n = 2), algorithmic design (n = 2), parallelization & iteration (n = 1), automation (n = 1), generalization (n = 1), and evaluation (n = 2).

A transversal analysis of digital literacy categories reveals the following fields of digital literacy application:

Technological advancement (IT, ICT, Industry 4.0, IoT, text mining, GIS, bibliometric analysis, mapping data, technology, AI, big data)

Networking (Internet, web, connectivity, network, safety)

Information (media, news, communication)

Creative-cultural industries (culture, publishing, film, TV, leisure, content creation)

Academia (research, documentation, library)

Citizenship (participation, society, social intelligence, awareness, politics, rights, legal use, ethics)

Education (life skills, problem solving, teaching, learning, education, lifelong learning)

Professional life (work, teamwork, collaboration, economy, commerce, leadership, decision making)

Personal level (critical thinking, evaluation, analytical thinking, innovative thinking)

This systematic review on digital literacy concentrated on forty-three articles from the databases of WoS/Clarivate Analytics, Proquest Central, Emerald Management Journals, Jstor Business College Collections and Scopus/Elsevier. The initial results revealed that there is an increasing trend on digital literacy focused academic papers. Research work in digital literacy is critical in a context of disruptive digital business, and more recently, the pandemic-triggered accelerated digitalisation (Beaunoyer, Dupéré & Guitton, 2020 ; Sousa & Rocha 2019 ). Moreover, most of these papers were employing qualitative research methods. The raw data of these articles were analysed qualitatively using systematic literature review to reveal major themes and categories. Four major themes that appeared are: digital literacy, digital competencies, digital skills and thinking.

Whereas the mainstream literature describes digital literacy as a set of photo-visual, real-time, information, branching, reproduction and social-emotional thinking (Eshet-Alkalai, 2012 ) or as a set of precise specific operations, i.e., finding, consuming, creating, communicating and sharing digital content (Heitin, 2016 ), this study reveals that digital literacy revolves around and is in connection with the concepts of computer literacy, media literacy, cultural literacy or disciplinary literacy. In other words, the present systematic review indicates that digital literacy is far broader than specific tasks, englobing the entire sphere of computer operation and media use in a cultural context.

The digital competence yardstick, DigComp (Carretero, Vuorikari & Punie, 2017 ) suggests that the main digital competencies cover information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. Similarly, the findings of this research place digital competencies in relation to problem solving, safety, information processing, content creation and communication. Therefore, the findings of the systematic literature review are, to a large extent, in line with the existing framework used in the European Union.

The investigation of the main keywords associated with digital skills has revealed that information literacy, ICT, communication, collaboration, digital content creation, research and decision-making skill are the most representative. In a structured way, the existing literature groups these skills in technological, cognitive, and social (Ng, 2012 ) or, more extensively, into operational, formal, information Internet, strategic, communication and content creation (van Dijk & van Deursen, 2014 ). In time, the literature has become richer in frameworks, and prolific authors have improved their results. As such, more recent research (vaan Laar et al., 2017 ) use the following categories: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving.

Whereas digital thinking was observed to be mostly related with critical thinking and computational thinking, DigComp connects it with critical thinking, creativity, and innovation, on the one hand, and researchers highlight fake news, misinformation, cybersecurity, and echo chambers as exponents of digital thinking, on the other hand (Sulzer, 2018 ; Puig, Blanco-Anaya & Perez-Maceira, 2021 ).

This systematic review research study looks ahead to offer an initial step and guideline for the development of a more contemporary digital literacy framework including digital literacy major themes and factors. The researchers provide the following recommendations for both researchers and practitioners.

Recommendations for prospective research

By considering the major qualitative research trend, it seems apparent that more quantitative research-oriented studies are needed. Although it requires more effort and time, mixed method studies will help understand digital literacy holistically.

As digital literacy is an umbrella term for many different technologies, specific case studies need be designed, such as digital literacy for artificial intelligence or digital literacy for drones’ usage.

Digital literacy affects different areas of human lives, such as education, business, health, governance, and so forth. Therefore, different case studies could be carried out for each of these unique dimensions of our lives. For instance, it is worth investigating the role of digital literacy on lifelong learning in particular, and on education in general, as well as the digital upskilling effects on the labour market flexibility.

Further experimental studies on digital literacy are necessary to realize how certain variables (for instance, age, gender, socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities, etc.) affect this concept overtly or covertly. Moreover, the digital divide issue needs to be analysed through the lens of its main determinants.

New bibliometric analysis method can be implemented on digital literacy documents to reveal more information on how these works are related or centred on what major topic. This visual approach will assist to realize the big picture within the digital literacy framework.

Recommendations for practitioners

The digital literacy stakeholders, policymakers in education and managers in private organizations, need to be aware that there are many dimensions and variables regarding the implementation of digital literacy. In that case, stakeholders must comprehend their beneficiaries or the participants more deeply to increase the effect of digital literacy related activities. For example, critical thinking and problem-solving skills and abilities are mentioned to affect digital literacy. Hence, stakeholders have to initially understand whether the participants have enough entry level critical thinking and problem solving.

Development of digital literacy for different groups of people requires more energy, since each group might require a different set of skills, abilities, or competencies. Hence, different subject matter experts, such as technologists, instructional designers, content experts, should join the team.

It is indispensably vital to develop different digital frameworks for different technologies (basic or advanced) or different contexts (different levels of schooling or various industries).

These frameworks should be updated regularly as digital fields are evolving rapidly. Every year, committees should gather around to understand new technological trends and decide whether they should address the changes into their frameworks.

Understanding digital literacy in a thorough manner can enable decision makers to correctly implement and apply policies addressing the digital divide that is reflected onto various aspects of life, e.g., health, employment, education, especially in turbulent times such as the COVID-19 pandemic is.

Lastly, it is also essential to state the study limitations. This study is limited to the analysis of a certain number of papers, obtained from using the selected keywords and databases. Therefore, an extension can be made by adding other keywords and searching other databases.

Availability of data and materials

The authors present the articles used for the study in “ Appendix A ”.

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Tinmaz, H., Lee, YT., Fanea-Ivanovici, M. et al. A systematic review on digital literacy. Smart Learn. Environ. 9 , 21 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-022-00204-y

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Digital Information Literacy among Medical Students: A Case Study of Travancore Medical College, Kollam, Kerala

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