DIGITAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS, STUDY HABITS AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENT  

Abstract

Although university life today is increasingly a digital one, with students having access to screens, chats and shared documents, little is known about how students feel comfortable using these digital tools relates to their more traditional study activities and to their final grades. In the present study, 370 University students (185 males and 185 females) were selected by convenience sampling from public and private sector Universities of Lahore (Pakistan) and the three-way relationship among digital communication skill, study habits and academic achievement among the students was investigated and also whether the male and female students were different in terms of these three variables was explored. A cross-sectional, correlational survey design was used. The participants filled out the Digital Skills Questionnaire (DSQ), the Study Habits Inventory, and the Academic Achievement Questionnaire (AAQ) and the data was analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics Version 26. Digital communication skills were significantly positively correlated with study habits (r = .61, p < .01), and with academic achievement (r = .48, p < .01); study habits were also correlated positively with academic achievement (r = .54, p < .01). When digital communication skills and study habits were entered together in a multiple regression model, both were found to have an independent and significant effect on academic achievement with digital communication skills accounting for 41.2% of the variance (R² = .412, F(2, 367) = 128.54, p < .001). Independent-samples t-tests also revealed slightly higher scores by female students in all three cases, with the differences being small. The findings, taken together, imply that digital competence and disciplined study behavior go together to account for academic success and have implications for the design of advising, digital-literacy, and study-skills programs in universities.