Bulan Pratama Nanda Riva’i – 004202100016 – Class 1

The Importance of Students' Understanding of the Use Digital Literacy

In this modern era, technology is very important for everyone. This cannot be

denied because we live in an era where everything is related to technology, you can

imagine how difficult our life is today if without using all the existing technology it would

be very difficult. Digital literacy is the knowledge and wisdom of a person in the use and

application of digital media such as communication tools, internet networks, etc. By

utilizing mobile phones and the application facilities available on them, it will definitely

make it easier to optimize digital literacy and if that happens is associated with learning, it

is very possible to improve the quality of learning for students.

The field of digital literacy education also plays an important role for students in

developing knowledge or understanding of certain subject matter based on the creativity

and curiosity possessed by students. But this raises questions about digital literacy. For

students who understand how to take advantage of digital progress, it will certainly be very

helpful, especially to help them in completing their school assignments, but there are also

some students due to the lack of knowledge and skills possessed by students. digital literacy

users, students who abuse technological advances. This is to access or do things they

shouldn't do. Digital literacy has become a hot topic lately. There are many uses for this.

But although the need for digital literacy is clear, the use of technology in education is still

less clear. Of course, most students are already familiar with different digital tools, but this

does not mean that they can use the same tools for learning purposes. Unfortunately, as

digital literacy is still one of the keywords that tend to be used without being specific, they

may have a hard time figuring out what digital literacy is.

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really means.

Advances in technology provide a lot of convenience for its users, for example for

students who are looking for material for their thesis material, you can imagine how

difficult it is for their to find material if they are not digitally literate. In the digital era like

today, the development of the internet and digital technology is very helpful in making

thesis. This has resulted in scientific reference sources being provided in digital form, and

these sources can be accessed to obtain millions and even billions of useful sources of

information for research papers. This technological development allows students to access

all information from within national or foreign, domestic or international. The more

learning resources students have, the smoother the learning process and the faster the

learning cycle. Based on the results of interviews with several USU psychology students,

data were obtained that they were ready to find sources and scientific references to

complete their final project. One student found that working directly with their digital

device made the process of completing the graduation project more convenient.

USU psychology students can be considered as already familiar with digital

technology. The survey results indicated that most of them have digital devices such as

smartphones and laptops, they believe they can master the use of smartphones well, they

feel they can master the use of smartphones well. In addition, 60% of their sample stated

that they often use electronic devices to help them in the learning process, and 65% of the

sample felt very helped by the presence of digital technology. They also often use digital

devices, 70% of which use digital devices to complete their tasks. The number of uses of

digital technology by USU Psychology Faculty students in making their final assignments

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can be seen from 60% of the total sample who claimed spend 6 hours of their time playing

on the internet. This number exceeds the average online time of the Indonesian population,

which is estimated at 5.5 hours per day. Student understanding is really needed in this case

as evidenced by the survey results showing that when arguing through online forums/social

networks, the proportion of students who respect other The differences of opinion between

people are 84.6% and the proportion of respecting the privacy of others when

communicating through online forums is 91. Compatible with tools / applications, with a

94.6% percentage to help speed up meeting allocation and read content carefully and read

content intelligently with a percentage of 87.5%. This shows that most students have a

positive attitude when using technology devices.

Of the many advantages that digital literacy offers, there are bound to be some bad

impacts. One of them is the impact of the internet on students' learning motivation. The

results of a survey using a questionnaire method conducted on 100 students showed that

from the results of descriptive statistical analysis, Among the five levels of interest in

Internet access, the highest interest in social networks was 34.8%, followed by schoolwork

31.3%, knowledge and education 18.5%, chat 12, 8% and online games 9.2%, news 7.2%.

The results of this study show that the impact of Internet use affects students' learning

motivation, which is represented by a value of 0.372. From this we realize that every thing

must have its good and bad, not least in our current technological developments. An

understanding of digital literacy is needed so that we know how to use, process, and utilize

this technological advancement correctly.

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References

Akbar, M. F., & Anggaraeni, F. D. (2017). Teknologi dalam pendidikan: Literasi digital

dan self-directed learning pada mahasiswa skripsi. Indigenous: Jurnal Ilmiah

Psikologi, 2(1).

Elpira, B. (2018). Pengaruh penerapan literasi digital terhadap peningkatan pembelajaran

siswa di SMP Negeri 6 Banda Aceh (Doctoral dissertation, UIN Ar-Raniry Banda Aceh).

Liansari, V., & Nuroh, E. Z. (2018). Realitas penerapan literasi digital bagi mahasiswa

FKIP Universitas Muhammadiyah Sidoarjo. Proceedings of the ICECRS, 1(3).