Digital Literacy Profile of Biology Education Students for 21st-Century Learning
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Digital literacy is increasingly important for prospective biology teachers because biology learning requires the use of digital scientific resources, online journal databases, multimedia representations, virtual laboratories, and digital tools for interpreting evidence and communicating scientific knowledge. Yet, empirical profiles that examine multiple dimensions of digital literacy specifically among Biology Education students remain limited. This study aimed to describe the digital literacy profile of Biology Education students, identify relative strengths and weaknesses across seven dimensions, and derive curriculum implications for teacher preparation. A quantitative descriptive survey was conducted with 45 fourth-semester Biology Education students at Universitas Islam Riau during the even semester of the 2025/2026 academic year. Participants were selected purposively. Data were collected using the final 35-item self-assessment instrument developed and psychometrically established by Kantona and Munadi (2024), which covers information literacy, digital scholarship, learning skills, ICT literacy, career and identity management, communication and collaboration, and media literacy. The original instrument development involved expert review, confirmatory factor analysis, graded response model/item response theory analysis, and reliability testing; the present study additionally obtained a sample-specific Cronbach's alpha of 0.894. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, achievement percentages, category distributions, and dimension-level comparisons. The overall achievement was 70.36% (mean = 3.52/5) and was categorized as moderate. Career and identity management was the strongest dimension (76.83%), while media literacy was the weakest (62.40%). The findings indicate a functional but uneven digital literacy foundation. Biology Education programs should therefore integrate authentic digital practices, especially scientific source evaluation, media critique, digital data interpretation, and technology-supported instructional design, across biology and pedagogical courses.
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