Digital Literacy Skills and Use of Electronic Databases by Postgraduate Students: A Case Study

This article offers a rationale for postgraduate students’ acquisition of digital literacy skills in 21^st-century education. Digital literacy skills have penetrated all aspects of education to become the most important skills scholars seeking information for academic advancement must possess. The descriptive survey research design was adopted in the study that unraveled digital competencies and skills of the postgraduate students in accessing electronic databases in Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria. Copies of the questionnaire used for data collection were administered on 320 respondents that were accidentally sampled from five randomly selected Faculties from the 14 existing Faculties in the University. Out of the copies of the questionnaire distributed, 263 copies were retrieved given an 82.2% return rate. The study revealed that 171(65.0%) and 168(63.9%) respondents with X = 2.3 and 2.0 respectively lacked personal abilities to determine and respond to security issues relating to web-based activities; and to construct search strategies for locating information in a digital environment. Also revealed was the fact that bulk of the respondents strongly agreed to using ERIC database (X = 4.0), Science Direct (X = 3.0), EBSCOHost (X = 3.1) Agora (X = 3.2), GOALI (X = 3.0), and HINARI (X =2.6). Furthermore, the study revealed the use of Smartphones (100%), Laptops (84.8%), and desktop computers (82.1%) as the dominant digital devices used by the respondents to access electronic databases. The study, therefore, recommended that the digital literacy skills of the respondents be improved upon among others.