Attitudes of Czech college students toward digital literacy and their technical aids in times of COVID-19

Abstract

At present, when the whole world is struggling with the COVID- 19 pandemic, it is important to address both the issue of flexibility when educating the younger generation and the issue of further professional education, which contributes to the development of competences that are directly relevant to life and everyday activities in the 21st century. The common denominator of these competences is digital competence. It is the aspect of education that is of primary and crucial importance for digital literacy development. This research study aims at establishing the availability of digital media and attitudes towards one's own technical aids and digital literacy among students of two higher education institutions in the Czech Republic. Empirical research involved 1233 college students. The set research hypotheses were tested with a questionnairebased survey using the Likert scale. A cluster analysis was conducted in the SPSS program. In view of the ordinal nature of data, the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test conducted at significance levels of 5% and 1% in SPSS was applied to test the dependence of competence self-assessment on the specialization of the higher education institutions/ study level/ study form. The research has unequivocally proven that digital literacy is influenced by the study programme specialization, study level and study form.