A Needs Analysis of Digital Citizenship Education for University Students in the Era of Great Digital Transformation

The purpose of this study is to analyze the need for digital citizenship education for university students in the era of great digital transformation, to explore ways to teach digital citizenship as part of liberal arts education in universities, and to reflect digital citizenship learning in our development of such courses. To this end, an online survey was conducted involving 414 university students in the Seoul metropolitan area. SPSS 25.0 was used to analyze the survey results. To perform a needs analysis, a t-test, the Borich needs assessment model, and the Locus for Focus model analysis were used, and the results were analyzed comprehensively. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, the results of the exploratory factor analysis of the digital citizenship scale constructed in this study extracted a total of 9 components: ‘digital identity’, ‘use of digital technology’, ‘balanced use of digital technology’, ‘digital security’, ‘digital empathy’, ‘digital communication’, ‘digital literacy and critical thinking’, ‘digital rights and responsibilities’, and ‘social participation through digital technology’. Second, this study examined the experiences and perceptions of digital citizenship education of the survey participants, and the findings indicated that most university students received digital citizenship education from elementary school, and that the awareness of the need for such education was very high. Third, the results of the needs analysis of digital citizenship education showed that ‘balanced use of digital technology’, ‘digital security’, ‘digital rights and responsibilities’, and ‘digital literacy and critical thinking’ had the highest priority, and that ‘social engagement through digital technology’ had a secondary priority. Based on the above findings, this study proposes an educational plan to enhance the digital citizenship competency of university students in the era of great digital transformation.