Cultivating Students’ Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking Skills with the IA-PjBL

Abstract

Project-based learning (PjBL) is promising for developing twenty-first-century competencies, yet time constraints and curricular silos limit authentic cross-disciplinary work. This study positions an integrative approach in PjBL (IA-PjBL) to link subjects through local problems and jointly examine digital literacy and critical thinking in a lower secondary school on Lae-Lae Island, Indonesia. A pre–post quasi-experimental design was implemented with two intact classes (N = 60; 30 experimental, 30 control), preceded by instrument piloting with thirty-seven students. Across six IA-PjBL projects, experimental-class students investigated island-based issues and produced digital artifacts (e-books, videos, posters, x-banners). Multiple-choice tests assessed digital literacy and critical thinking of students. Both classes showed substantial pre–post gains. A one-way MANOVA indicated a significant multivariate group effect on the combined pre- and posttest scores (Pillai’s Trace = 0.254, F (4,55) = 4.691, p = 0.002). Follow-up ANOVAs showed no significant group difference for posttest digital literacy, but a significant difference for posttest critical thinking favoring the experimental class (F (1,58) = 4.96, p = 0.030, ω² ≈ 0.06). N-gain analysis likewise indicated higher gains in critical thinking for the experimental class (0.74 vs 0.59). Posttest digital literacy and critical thinking scores were strongly correlated (r = 0.897, p < 0.01). These findings suggest that IA-PjBL is particularly effective for strengthening students’ critical thinking in small-island contexts while supporting substantial improvements in digital literacy in both instructional conditions.