DIGITAL LITERACY LEVEL OF THAI HIGHER EDUCATION'S STUDENTS

Digital literacy is sufficiently important to be incorporated into education at all levels, especially at the tertiary level, which is responsible for producing human resources with high working competency and high ability to live in the changing environment of the digital society. This paper is part of the research study on the development of digital literacy in Thai higher education. The research aims at investigating the digital literacy level of the students in Thai higher education based on the opinions of faculty members and the current students. The quantitative research method was applied with a survey conducted to collect information from the target group that consisted of 500 faculty members and 1,000 students of 116 Thai universities. The respondents were asked to rate the level of students' digital literacy skills which comprised of 5 core skills which the researcher synthesized from previous frameworks, guidelines and researches. The skills include information, reproduction, hypermedia, communication, and socio-emotional skills. The data was analyzed into means, and standard deviations. The findings revealed that the respondents rated the students have the communication skills at high level, but the others are at moderate levels listed in order of mean values: socio-emotional, information, reproduction, and hypermedia skills respectively. The analysis of 21 sub-skills of digital literacy; the skills in the use of digital technology for communication, learning, working, and leading in everyday life, found that the followings are top ten skills of students: communication, collaboration, dissemination, accession, expression, digital citizenship, interpretation, responsibility, statement, and reflection. The findings in this phase will be used for the next step of this research on the development of digital literacy in Thai higher education.