Abstract:

Technology literacy remains a critical issue in the academic activities of university students. There are conflicting beliefs about students' information technology skills. One is that students know more about computers and information technology than teachers, at least at the user level. Another is that first-year university students do not have adequate computer skills for university-level work, and that teachers have limited time to teach these skills in addition to the content of the subject they teach.

In this context, we hypothesise that there is a digital divide in terms of IT knowledge and experience among first-year students new to university, and that this gap narrows as they stay at university. And a second hypothesis is that university students in general do not have sufficient technology and software skills to achieve digital empowerment and its use in their academic performance.

If this disparity in the technological knowledge of university students is not addressed in a timely manner, it may seriously compromise the development of certain competencies related to the application of technological concepts, as well as their software skills and academic performance.

Therefore, our objective is to identify the level of academic use of technology, not only in terms of computer literacy, but also in terms of the degree of real and effective empowerment of students, understood as the set of digital knowledge that can be put into practice to obtain benefits in academic performance and avoid dropping out of the university system. The database for this preliminary study corresponds to students in the Faculty of Commerce of the Complutense University of Madrid and the Faculty of Economics and Business Studies of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. The first results show that there is little empowerment of both teachers and students to use ICT in academic teaching.

Keywords:

Literacy, Technology, Empowerment, pilot survey, TIC.