Poster Presentation (Core time: 11:45-12:45)

[1R11] An Assessment of Digital Competence of Freshmen at Top Ranked Public Universities in Bangladesh

*Rakibul HASSAN¹ (1. Kobe University)

Keywords:Digital Competence, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Digital Literacy, Bangladesh, Universities

Digital competence is an integral part of the extended Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) which predicts technology adoption in a country. Moreover, the universities being both in the supply and demand side of digital competence requires digital competence for digitalized education. However, there is a dearth of academic study on the digital competence of freshmen at the universities in Bangladesh. Against this backdrop, it is necessary to assess the digital competence of freshmen at universities in Bangladesh to predict their digital technology adoption. Therefore, this study examines the digital competence of freshmen at five (05) top ranked public universities in Bangladesh. A structured close-ended survey questionnaire following the Digital Literacy Scale (DLS) was prepared to collect data from randomly sampled 487 freshmen students from five (05) top ranked public universities in Bangladesh. For each student, the literacy score for each component of digital literacy identified for this study (computer, information, media, visual, technology, and communication literacy) and the overall digital literacy was calculated using the DLS. The Cronbach alpha test showed that the questionnaire was reliable and had a high internal consistency. A correlation analysis – Spearman’s correlation was also carried out which indicated that the overall digital competence of the students was dependent on the individual score for each of the components of the digital competence identified in this study. The results show that the university freshmen were moderately digitally literate which suggests that they are not fully ready to reap the advantages of digitalization of higher education.