DIGITAL FACILITIES UTILIZATION AND COMPUTER SKILLS AMONG SCIENCE AND ARTS STUDENTS.

The computer world expanded into each and every sector in the current digital era including the education field and rapidly targeting students to acquaint computer and digital knowledge not only for entertaining but also to enhance academic skills. The basics of digital technology are in reach of the people through different sources such as smart phones, desktop computers, laptops and tablets. Recently, the curricular and competency levels are gradually incorporating to the students to acquire digital skills by motivating to various modes of pedagogy such as seminars, assignments and project works. The present research was mainly focused on understanding the digital devices owning by the students, studying knowledge levels of computer skills and frequency of utilizing digital services. The study was carried out from the randomly selected college students of both science and arts streams from the university and colleges students located at Tirupati urban. The sample size of the present investigation comprised of 60 students from each stream of science and arts with total sample of 120 members. The findings well demonstrated that absolutely all the students owned the smart phone and surprisingly one third of them were even planned to purchase the new mobile within one year. The data indicated that around one fourth of science students had desktop and tablets and about one tenth in arts students. The computer skills and levels of confidence also noticed at higher levels in science students against their arts students' counterparts probably the science students regular academic activities might be intricately enabled the basic computer skills. The information gathered from the students strongly highlighted the high frequency utilization of smart phone by students of both streams. Educating students, creating awareness and organizing digital training programmes by colleges will surely helpful to enhance the digital skills among the students and to excel their academic and future career opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]