The Role of Digital Skills Exercises in Developing Higher- Level Thinking Skills

Developing students’ higher-order thinking skills is a fundamental goal of modern education, as it contributes to preparing a generation capable of analysis, evaluation, and creativity. In this context, the current study aimed to examine the extent to which the exercises in the Digital Skills textbook for the second intermediate grade contribute to the development of higher-order thinking skills according to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. For this purpose, the researchers employed the descriptive-analytical method using content analysis, and prepared a content analysis checklist to evaluate the exercises in the Digital Skills textbooks approved by the Saudi Ministry of Education for the three semesters of the academic year 2023/2024. The results showed that the textbook exercises largely focused on lower-order thinking levels (remembering, understanding, and applying) at a rate of (94.21%), with 293 questions. The highest percentage of these levels appeared in the second semester (96.43%), followed by the third semester (96.2%), and the first semester (91.9%). In contrast, higher-order thinking levels (analyzing, evaluating, and creating) received little attention, accounting for only 5.8% with 18 questions. The highest percentage of these levels appeared in the first semester (8.1%), followed by the third semester (3.8%), and the second semester (3.57%). The findings revealed statistically significant differences between the lower- and higher-order thinking levels in favor of higher-order skills. KEYWORDS Computer education, digital skills, educational evaluation, intermediate stage, revised bloom’s taxonomy, curriculum exercises