Searching for a shared understanding of digital confidence in a tertiary context: a scoping review

Abstract

Digital confidence has been increasingly cited as key for staff and student development in tertiary education, often alongside concepts of digital competence or digital capabilities. In the past three years it has formed part of the discussion in our sector (higher education) around adapting to this time of rapid change, especially during the period of Covid-19 emergency learning and teaching moved online. While digital confidence has long been a focus of our learning technology staff support team, we noticed through discussion with peers and previous reading and research, that our understanding of what digital confidence is and how it develops sometimes differed from the way in which it was represented in the journals and grey literature that we were initially reading. This prompted our scoping review of the literature, exploring whether there is a shared understanding of digital confidence in the tertiary sector and how its relationship to digital competence and similar concepts is understood. The review also discusses implications for organisational digital transformation strategies, student employability, and the wellbeing of students and staff, as well as noting the important role learning developers could play in supporting the development of digital confidence.