This study was conducted to comprehensively diagnose what kind of digital literacy capabilities university students actually have at the present time when the digital technology environment is advancing, and to derive educational implications for liberal arts education based on this. Higher-order competencies, such as information reliability assessment, ethics and security awareness, and self-regulation in the digital environment, are required as essential elements in recent university education, beyond the ability to use information. However, the basic data on how university students actually perceive and use the digital environment are limited, and differences according to learners' major characteristics have not been sufficiently identified. Starting with this awareness of the problem, this study conducted a survey based on nine sub-factors of digital literacy (reading and writing value, Internet value, self-efficacy, emotion, behavioral self-regulation, participation, ethics, security, and critical reading) on a total of 323 students, 154 students in 24th grade and 169 students in 25th grade at C University in Chungcheongnam-do. As a result of the analysis, 20 out of 24 students had an error in the data, and 303 students were statistically analyzed, and college students scored high in the areas of basic utility awareness and ethics and security related to the use of digital technology, but they showed relatively low levels in higher-order digital competencies such as critical reading and behavioral self-regulation. In addition, a significant difference was identified in the comparison between students in two grades with different regional and major environments, suggesting that student characteristics should be considered when designing future lectures. The evaluation tool used in this study can be extended to elementary school students, college students, and adult learners, and it can be used to analyze changes in digital literacy competency in the long term through surveys conducted before and after classes by semester and year in the future. This study is meaningful as basic data for verifying the educational effectiveness of the ‘Digital Literacy and Ethics’ lecture and improving college student competency.
Kim et al. (2025) studied this question.