Developing 9th grade students' digital competencies as apart of statistics lesson

This study aims to develop digital competencies of 9th grade students (STs) through implementing designed digital competency (DC) learning module integrated into statistics content area. Seven 9th grade STs were participated to the study. Case study method was used to examine development of the 9th grade students' digital competencies (DCs) within the process of module implementation as well as document the changes in DCs of the STs before and after the study. Semi-structured pre-post interviews, video data of classroom activities and students' screen recordings, and the written online documents of the STs were used as data collection tool. The pre and post interview findings revealed that STs had a very limited extent of DCs before the study. In the pre-interview, they indicated that they experienced various difficulties such as spending too much time searching, not being able to access reliable and accurate sources on the Internet and meaningfully synthesizing information from various online sources. In addition, majority of them stated that they did not believe in the necessity of giving citation for the used sources unless it is requirement given by teacher. After the study, they all enhanced their competency of access and assess reliable and accurate online sources along with meaningfully synthesizing information from multiple sources. They gained the competency of giving reference to the sources used in their works because of academic reasons such as preventing knowledge and labor theft. In addition, they became aware of the legal responsibilities regarding to ethical issues. The analysis of video data revealed that as students became more digitally competent, they could reach relevant, reliable and accurate academic sources to reveal the story behind the data, to provide alternative explanations for the statistical inferences and to deepen their contextual knowledge of data. In addition, they started to employ both statistical knowledge covered in the study and DCs while making statistical claims. The overall results of the study suggested that implementing a learning module that draw strength from statistics and use of DCs on Internet, contributed to development of DCs of the 9th grade students. They gained the competencies of critically evaluating online sources, even their own beliefs and knowledge. They also became aware of ethical and legal responsibilities while synthesizing information from online sources. These results showed the potential benefits of implementing such module for closing the gap identified in the literature as insufficiency in learning resources and practices that is connected to real-world and a few numbers of intervention studies for developing DCs of the students in the existing school system. In addition, they could utilize power of other disciplines such as History, Political Science to reveal the underlying story/reason behind the statistical conclusion and inferences. As a result, implementing the learning module that uses power of statistics and DCs, opened a way for interdisciplinary learning environment.