Digital Literacy Training and Workplace Empowerment: What Happens after Graduation?

Objectives

Across the globe, competencies that facilitate critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and fluency with digital tools that support these competencies, top the inventories of employability skills (Klegeris, 2021; Matuszewska-Kubicz, 2021). Humanities and social science (HSS) programs appear to generate effective employees for the growing business services sector (BSS), which seeks job candidates with interpersonal and communication skills to address the various needs of clients and to work in sustainable multidisciplinary teams (Muller & Doloreux, 2009; Multan, 2020). Digital literacy skills appear to constitute some of the learning outcomes (Sparks et al., 2016) that the business sector expects university graduates to attain and to feel empowered in as they enter the labor market. Our study examines the psychological empowerment of recent HSS alumni after attending four different digital literacy courses at the Jagiellonian University in Poland. The goal was to examine the extent to which this empowerment differed depending on the type of digital literacy skill training—information, data, visual, or communication and collaboration—these alumni completed.

Methodology

Six months after graduation, HSS alumni who in their final year of study completed a digital skills course designed to support their entrance into the labor market, and who were employed in business services, completed a psychological empowerment survey based on Spreitzer’s (2007) framework. The sample for this quasi-experiment consisted of 202 responses (information literacy, n = 52; data literacy, n = 54, communication and collaboration, n = 54; visual literacy, n = 42). Bayesian statistics were used to examine differences in empowerment self-reports between alumni who completed the four digital literacy courses.

Outcomes

Students who completed courses in information literacy and data literacy reported higher workplace empowerment compared to those who completed courses in visual literacy, and communication and collaboration. Despite the study’s limitations concerning the Polish context, the research findings suggest curricular design implications that are relevant to a wider, international workplace context. Firstly, students would benefit from digital skills training opportunities provided within HSS programs. Secondly, certain digital skills appear to be more advantageous for students pursuing careers in the business services sector than others.

References

Klegeris, A. (2021). Mixed-mode instruction using active learning in small teams improves generic problem-solving skills of university students. J. of Further and Higher Education, 45(7), 871–885. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2020.1826036
Matuszewska-Kubicz, A. (2021). Key competencies in the labour market from the perspective of higher education students. E-Mentor, 92(5), 69–80. https://doi.org/10.15219/em92.1541
Muller, E., & Doloreux, D. (2009). What we should know about knowledge-intensive business services. Technology in Society, 31(1), 64–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2008.10.001
Multan, E. (2020). Adjusting students’ competences to the needs of modern business services sector. Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 7(3), 2326–2349. https://doi.org/10.9770/jesi.2020.7.3(58)
Sparks, J. R., Katz, I. R., & Beile, P. M. (2016). Assessing digital information literacy in higher education: A review of existing frameworks and assessments with recommendations for next-generation assessment: Assessing digital information literacy in higher education. ETS Research Report Series, 2016(2), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/ets2.12118
Spreitzer, G. M. (2007). Toward the integration of two perspectives: A review of social-structural and psychological empowerment at work. The Handbook of Organizational Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Marek Deja¹, Piotr Bobkowski², Isto Huvila³, Anna Mierzecka⁴
¹Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland; ²University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA; ³Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; ⁴University of Warsaw, Warszawa, Poland