ESP Students’ Digital Literacy Needs: The Teachers’ Perspectives

Abstract

One of the forces of learning in the 21st century is digital lifestyle which can be acquired by obtaining digital literacy. There are many advantages that digital literacy offers, especially in an education setting. However, there was limited literature on students’ digital literacy needs analysis to support the curriculum in ESP context. This study aimed at finding English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students’ digital literacy needs to provide information for constructing ESP curriculum. The data were obtained from 55 ESP teachers through a questionnaire and an interview. Then, the data were analyzed by using content analysis. The result of the study revealed that ESP students needed to have a high degree of expertise on three components of digital literacy proposed by Hague and Payton (2010), namely functional skills, critical thinking and evaluation, and ability to find and select information. In addition, ESP students required to possess a more technical understanding of five components of digital literacy, namely creativity, cultural and social understanding, collaboration, effective communication, and e-safety. It is suggested that ESP teachers and the university policymaker need to consider the students’ digital literacy needs in constructing the ESP curriculum. Moreover, other researchers were suggested to conduct studies using different frameworks of digital literacy.