Students of humanities and digital skills: a survey on Italian university students

Abstract

This paper presents a study carried out to survey the digital skills of Italian students belonging to the latest generation of digital natives and currently enrolled in university courses of humanities, in which IT and digital skills risk to be neglected both by the students’ interest and the range of offered courses. The study aims to understand how students perceive their level of digital skills and whether there is a discrepancy between their self-assessed level and their actual knowledge. Participants answered a survey of four sections, including preliminary questions, two self-assessment parts and a section containing multiple-choice questions, based on the European Framework of Digital Competences, on both theoretical and practical aspects of IT and digital skills. Results show that participants tend to overestimate their digital skills and that they lack knowledge of basic topics. Besides outlining the digital competences of Italian humanities students, this study points out digital skills that should be strengthen, whereas they are often taken for granted by teachers and institutions, although students need those skills in their university and professional life, but also for their daily digital needs.