Enhancing students’ digital literacy skills through their technology use in a course-based research project: a Hong Kong case study

Abstract Rapid technological developments in the digital era have led to substantial changes to higher education curricula. This paper reports on a qualitative study which examined students’ perceptions of digital literacy skills development through the completion of a course-based digital research project. Consisting of a digital skills training workshop and assessment tasks including the production of a website and a video, the research-oriented project was designed to be incorporated into a sociolinguistics course offered to undergraduate students at a university in Hong Kong. 57 Students participated in the group project as part of the coursework and wrote a reflective essay on their learning experiences upon the completion of the project. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted to analyze students’ written responses in relation to their development of various digital literacy skills, including branching literacy, information literacy, reproduction literacy, photo-visual literacy, socio-emotional literacy, and technical literacy. The findings of the study showed that students considered their use of technology in the project facilitative of their development of digital literacy. While the nature and requirements of the assessment tasks may have limited students’ development of photo-visual literacy, positive experiences with regard to students’ development of the other literacy skills were reported. It is recommended that similar technologically mediated, discovery-enriched assessment tasks be implemented within the existing curricula in the higher education sector. To enhance students’ development of photo-visual literacy, teachers are also recommended to provide students with more opportunities for them to make use of visual graphics in their coursework.