Assessing and developing college students’ digital learning power: an empirical study based on questionnaire survey in a Chinese university

Abstract Learning power has become a significant impacting factor on learning quality in digital age. This study is a survey at a university in China, using a questionnaire with seven evaluation indicators integrated into learning dimensions, to assess college students’ digital learning power (DLP). The main findings are as follows. College students have achieved the basic level of digital learning power, but the proportion of those with the high level is still low and seven dimensions of college students’ DLP exhibit different characteristics. Moreover, there are significant differences in DLP in terms of gender, discipline, origin and grade. With the change in grades, DLP and its sub-dimensions of college students demonstrates three development trends. It can be inferred that the sophomore and junior years are key stages for cultivating college students’ digital learning power. There is a positive path of progressive development between curiosity and other six dimensions, which indicates that the DLP of college students is characterized by stages ranging from occurrence to development . Accordingly, it is necessary for the improvement of the DLP of college students to construct an evaluation system of DLP, create digital course resources, strengthen academic guidance from teachers and encourage students to engage in independent deep learning.