Abstract

BURIN, Debora; COCCIMIGLIO, Yamila; GONZALEZ, Federico  and  BULLA, Jhon. Advances in Digital Abilities and Online Reading Comprehension. Psicol. Conoc. Soc. [online]. 2016, vol.6, n.1, pp.191-206. ISSN 1688-7026.

Students born in the information age (‘digital natives’) might have more access to digital technologies, but the idea that they learn better just by implementing learning platforms with the latest technology is simplistic and is not supported by evidence. Using digital environments for academic purposes requires digital abilities. These include not only technical and operational abilities, but also cognitive abilities such as search and navigation, integrating multiple sources, source evaluation, and strategic use of information. Digital abilities have been studied with self-report questionnaires, and with computerized tasks for information search and comprehension. Advances in the self-report measures include the psychometric study of digital abilities questionnaires in large samples. As for the performance measures of digital abilities, studies have designed task environments similar to Internet sites, requiring search, comprehension and integration, and have measured accuracy, time in various aspects of the tasks, and navigation paths. While research is still scarce, it suggests a relationship between digital abilities and online reading comprehension. When this relationship is examined with the second type of measure, performance tasks, definitions of digital abilities and online reading comprehension partially overlap (e.g. in the PISA assessment). Future research about this relationship could take into account different aspects of digital abilities and online reading comprehension to better characterize them, and possible educational intervention strategies.

Keywords : Digital abilities; Digital natives; Reading comprehension.

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