The Relationship between Digital Literacy and Educational Strategy Use: The Case of Iranian EFL Learners

The shift towards online learning based on contemporary circumstances imposed a high demand on both teachers and students. In response to this challenge, within the framework of a descriptive correlational design, a group of 96 Iranian students from the Mohhades Nouri non-profit university in northern Iran were chosen by non-random convenience sampling to participate in a Digital Literacy (DL) program. After pretest, participants received 12 sessions of treatment on iTool digital resources, and then they were assessed by a posttest as well as a three-month delayed posttest. The results of the study indicated that the DL group showed significant improvement in their academic performance after the intervention, with noticeable differences between pretest and posttest scores which were analyzed through the Test of Within-Subjects Effects. Furthermore, the study revealed a strong correlation between DL and educational strategy use in relation to reading comprehension scores. These findings suggest that providing DL training can be beneficial to students facing educational challenges in using on-line platforms.