How to turn students’ smartphone confidence into academic digital literacy

Most first-year students arrive at university with a smartphone and considerable confidence using apps. But being digitally active does not mean being digitally ready for university. 

We encountered students who could communicate confidently through social media and mobile apps but struggled with seemingly simple tasks such as locating a downloaded file, organising folders, attaching the correct document to an email or working collaboratively in the cloud. These are not minor inconveniences. They can delay engagement, undermine confidence and become barriers to assessment.

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Our response was based around Birmingham City University’s self-help hub Digital Kickstart. Supported by live teaching, it focuses on the practical computing habits students need for study and employment. Rather than attempting to teach every feature of every application, the emphasis is on the digital tasks students repeatedly encounter during their university journey. 

The following strategies have made the greatest difference in our context and can be adapted by other institutions.

1. Start with a supportive skills check

We avoid asking students whether they are “good with computers”. The question is too broad and can make them feel judged. Instead, early activities ask them to complete ordinary tasks: sign into university systems, find a module on Moodle, create and name a folder, save a document to OneDrive, attach a file to Outlook and join a Teams space.

This gives teaching staff a practical picture of where support is needed, while students discover gaps privately and without embarrassment. The check is formative rather than punitive. Its purpose is to guide students towards the right help and prevent assumptions based on age, nationality or confidence with a phone.

2. Teach the student journey, not a list of software

Digital skills training can easily become a series of disconnected software demonstrations. We organised support around the tasks students will encounter during their studies. Digital Kickstart begins with getting to know Moodle and installing Microsoft Office, then introduces PowerPoint and Word. From there, students learn how to use Outlook, OneDrive and Teams. Additional sections cover digital accessibility, artificial intelligence, PDFs and Adobe, computer tips, online examination support and useful contacts.

The sequence matters. We demonstrate a complete workflow: receive an instruction in Moodle, create the work in Word or PowerPoint, name and store it correctly in OneDrive, collaborate through Teams, convert it to PDF and submit it through the appropriate system. When technologies are taught through a recognisable academic flow, students understand not only which button to press but when and why they need to perform the task. This is how we mapped our own platforms on to the same student journey rather than replicating a particular set of software. University labs can provide standard equipment and universal access.

3. Combine short resources with guided bootcamps

A library of videos is useful but a resource page alone does not change practice. We pair short, focused videos with intensive bootcamps and crash courses. In a live session, students follow the process on their own device while a tutor demonstrates it step by step. They can pause, make mistakes and ask questions immediately. Each activity should produce something visible: a correctly named folder, a shared file, a formatted document or a successful practice upload. 

The aim is active practice rather than passive demonstration. Keep demonstrations short and repeat the core routine; prioritise consistency rather than trying to cover every feature of every application.

Digital skills are quickly forgotten if they are taught only during induction. Students might not recognise that they need a particular skill until they encounter a real academic task weeks or months later. Our Moodle hub remains available throughout the year, allowing students to revisit a short explanation when an assignment, group task or online examination makes it relevant. 

We also signpost a named contact and useful links because students might describe a technical problem as an academic one or remain silent because they do not know where to ask. Embedding links to the hub within module pages, assessment briefs and reminder messages brings digital support closer to the point at which students need it. Support is most effective when it appears beside the task, not several clicks away in a generic induction area.

4. Use assessment feedback to reinforce digital habits

We use low-stakes formative activities to check whether students can apply what they have learned before the final assessment. Feedback covers the digital process as well as the academic content: file names, document structure, accessibility, presentation, collaboration, submission format and whether the correct version has been uploaded.

This creates a useful feedback loop. Recurring difficulties tell us which videos or workshops need revising; students receive another opportunity to practise before marks are at risk. The feedback loop works in both directions. Students learn which digital habits they need to improve, while recurring problems help educators identify where guidance or support needs revisiting. 

The wider lesson is simple: do not treat digital literacy as a one-off orientation topic or assume that smartphone familiarity will transfer automatically to academic work. Start by identifying digital tasks students need to perform. Demonstrate them as part of the recognisable workflow, give students a safe environment in which to practise them and make support visible when it becomes relevant. 

Nassir Ibrahim is senior lecturer in business analytics, Jameson Tucker is a learning developer, and Imran Khan is senior lecturer in marketing and strategy, all at Birmingham City University.

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