TEACHING ADVANCED DIGITAL LITERACY IN UNIVERSITY NON ICT STUDIES

In many modern workplaces outside of ICT sector the effectiveness of the workers still depends on the worker’s ICT literacy. It is true for public health specialists, it is true for managers in business, it is true in public sector. In many cases one can notice the increase of administration only because of insufficient ability to perform tasks, requiring ICT literacy that would help to make rational management decisions.

In many study programs there’s an IT module that is dedicated to give students digital literacy. Unfortunately, it appears that the students aren’t sufficiently able to apply that knowledge, especially advanced ICT, in other modules. Similar problems are noted in discussions with employers. More than 10 years experience of teaching advanced functions (Solver, Goal seek, Lookup, etc.) for students of Business Administration studies in Kaunas University of Technology shows that the first year students are unable to apply advanced functions in practice by themselves without additional explanation during practical project in the second and the third year. This problem is still more important given the plans to shorten bachelor studies to 3 years. Such problems are also common in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences.

It has been decided to find out, to what extent the experience of one university can be applied in another. Thus the opinions of the students of both universities have been explored. Two surveys were used - both for experienced in gradually integrated ICT learning students and for non-experienced ones. The students of different study programs were asked about their opinion concerning teaching of ICT. Results have been processed using SPSS. It has been found out that in Kaunas University of Technology more than 70% of students are content with such studies, while in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences about 50% are willing to make such an experiment.

Since data analysis shows that students seem to be content with integrated teaching of ICT, it looks possible to try out gradual teaching of ICT topics in Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Public Health study program. It looks possible to add ICT studies to module “Sociology” in the first year, “Basic Epidemiology” of the second year and “Basic Economics” of the third year.