Digital literacy among student community in management institutes in Davanagere District, Karnataka State, India

Abstract

Institutions of higher education are responsible for preparing well-informed, skilled and globally competent workforce. They have adopted information and communication technologies (ICT) to impart digital literacy skills to their students. An understanding of the use of ICT by the students helps in framing curriculum for the digital literacy course. A study of the use of various ICT tools and web based services by 135 students, registered for 3rd Semester of Master of Business Administration course in six institutions of higher education in Davanagere district, Karnataka State was undertaken during August 2012. Questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. The findings reveal that all the respondents own personal computer, and 73.33% of them have their own Internet connectivity. Laptop, smart phone, digital camera and I-pod are the most widely used tools. Computer and laptop are used for class work, study and research through internet, while smart phone, digital camera and I-pod are used mainly for personal purpose. Web portals are considered as major source of information about companies. Open access journals and institutional repositories are used to the least extent. E-mail and Facebook are the most widely used web-based services. Only 22.96% and 02.96% of the respondents are aware of the online databases in 'Capitaline' and 'IndiaStat' respectively. There is need to sensitize them to use web resources and web based services for research and academic purposes. Majority of them agree that information is easily available on internet, but, it needs to be evaluated before use. A model curriculum is proposed to impart digital literacy skills (basic and cognitive) to the students of Master of Business Administration.