Digital literacy in music education

Today, the digital life we experience in the light of technological innovations has developed not only the tools and equipment utilized, but also the concept of literacy, and various types of literacy have emerged. Among these types, digital literacy, which has gained popularity with today's technology, has started to be the subject of many researches since it expresses the skills of accessing, using, understanding and problem-solving accurate and reliable information through technology. These researches have started to be investigated in the field of education as well as in different fields. It is noticeable that there are studies investigating the digital literacy levels of teachers in different branches in the field of education, but the digital literacy levels of academicians in the field of music education have not been investigated. The purpose of this research is to examine the digital literacy competencies of academicians working in the field of music education and to determine the place and importance of digital literacy in music education. The main problem of this research for the main purpose was determined as; "What are the views of academicians working in the field of music education on digital literacy proficiency levels and the place and importance of digital literacy in music education?". In line with the main problem; what are the digital literacy competency levels of academicians, is there a difference between the digital literacy competency levels of academicians in terms of gender, years of service, age, education level, academic title, daily internet usage time, daily digital tool usage time, most frequently used digital tool variables, and what are the opinions of academicians about the place and importance of digital literacy in music education. The group of the study consisted of 150 academicians working in the Department of Music Education in the Faculty of Education of 36 different universities in the 2021-2022 academic year. Mixed method was preferred in the study and quantitative data were collected with the Digital Literacy Assessment Scale developed by Acar (2015) and qualitative data were collected with a structured interview form. The Digital Literacy Assessment Scale consists of 40 items and 5 sub-dimensions in 5-point Likert type. These dimensions are Awareness, Contextual Use, Safe Participation, Digital Identity Management and Basic Knowledge of Tools and Media. The obtained data were transferred to the computer and SPSS 26.0 package program was used for statistical analysis of quantitative data. Arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage values were used to calculate descriptive statistics. Kolmogorow- Smirnov normality test was used to determine whether the data were suitable for normal distribution, and Levene's statistic was used for homogeneity of variances. It was determined that the quantitative data of the research were not suitable for normal distribution. Therefore, nonparametric tests were preferred in analyzing the research data. Qualitative data were analyzed with content analysis technique. Following the content analysis, concepts and themes explaining the data were reached. The themes were created to explain the data at a general level and to group the codes under certain categories. Within the scope of the research, the digital literacy competencies of academicians working in music education were examined according to gender, years of service, age, education level, academic title, daily internet usage time, daily digital tool usage time and the most frequently used digital tool variables. According to the research findings, it was determined that academicians in the field of music education evaluated their digital literacy competence levels at a "completely sufficient" level. The digital literacy levels of academicians for the whole scale; It was found that the digital literacy levels of academicians did not differ according to the gender variable, but when analyzed in terms of scale dimensions, there was a significant difference in the basic tool and media knowledge sub-dimension, it did not differ according to the years of service variable, but there was a significant difference in the digital identity management sub-dimension, it did not differ according to the age variable, but there was a significant difference in the contextual use sub-dimension, It was found that there was no significant difference according to the variable of daily internet usage time, but there was a significant difference in the contextual use sub-dimension, there was no significant difference according to the most frequently used digital tool variable, but there was a significant difference in the basic tool and media knowledge sub-dimension, and there was no significant difference according to the variables of education level, academic title and daily digital tool usage time. According to the results of the study, the digital literacy levels of academicians working in the field of music education are completely sufficient according to the sum of the scores obtained from the whole The Digital Literacy Assessment Scale. The digital literacy levels of male academicians working in the field of music education were found to be higher than female academicians. In the digital identity management sub-dimension of the scale, academics who have been working for 16-20 years have the highest digital literacy level, while academics who have been working for 20 years or more have the lowest digital literacy level; in the contextual use sub-dimension of the scale, academics with the highest digital literacy level are in the 30-39 age range, while the digital literacy levels of academics in the 50-59 and 60 and over age groups are lower than other groups; In the contextual use sub-dimension of the scale, it is seen that academics who use the internet for 6 hours or more daily have the highest digital literacy level, while academics who use the internet for 1 hour daily have low digital literacy levels. Regarding the place and importance of digital literacy in music education, it was found that being digitally literate in the field of music education is very essential, academicians should have the knowledge and equipment required by digital literacy, being digitally literate can contribute to the music education process in terms of education and training, educators and students; it is important in terms of planning qualified lectures, offering different teaching opportunities, active learning, access to accurate information, providing depth and permanence in knowledge, using appropriate materials in the lesson, creating lectures and meetings from online platforms, making them enjoyable and permanent by using digital materials, managing thesis remotely, following academic publications, accessing databases and digital libraries. Key Words: Digital literacy, music education, academician, digital literacy in music education.