The impact of training on digital citizenship skills in developing students’ attitudes towards sustainable development at the university level

Abstract

The research aimed to investigate the impact of training on digital citizenship skills in developing attitudes toward sustainable development among university students. The study involved 25 first-year students from Prince Sattam bin Abdulaziz University, including 13 Medical Sciences College students in the experimental group and 12 Engineering College students in the control group. The researcher administered the following tools: the training program and the Sustainable Development Attitude Scale. A quasi-experimental design was employed, and data were analyzed statistically using the Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests. The research results revealed statistically significant differences between the mean ranks of the scores of individuals in the experimental and control groups on the Sustainable Development Attitude Scale after the implementation of the program in favor of the experimental group. Additionally, statistically significant differences were found between the mean ranks of the scores of individuals in the experimental group on the Sustainable Development Attitude Scale in the pre-test and post-test measures in favor of the post-test. However, no statistically significant differences were found between the mean ranks of the scores of the experimental group on the Sustainable Development Attitude Scale in the post-test and follow-up measures (after one month). The researcher provided a comprehensive discussion of the study variables: attitudes towards sustainable development and its components, as well as the training program based on digital citizenship skills in the current study. Furthermore, the researcher presented some recommendations and proposed further research.