Exploring the effects of digital literacy training on college students' self-leadership: a longitudinal randomized...

Self-leadership is recognized as a critical self-regulatory capacity for academic success and personal development. While prior correlational studies have linked digital literacy to self-regulated learning, experimental evidence for a potential directional pathway from digital literacy enhancement to self-leadership development remains scarce. This study aimed to explore whether a structured digital literacy training program might contribute to improving college students' self-leadership over time.

A total of 158 college students (M_age = 20.14, SD = 1.33; 57 males, 101 females) were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n = 79) receiving a 10-week digital literacy training program or a waitlist control group (n = 79). Two participants were excluded from the final analysis due to extreme baseline values and inconsistent response patterns. Self-leadership was measured at three time points: pre-test (T1), post-test (immediate post-intervention) (T2), and 1-month follow-up (T3) using the Revised Self-Leadership Questionnaire (RSLQ-38). Mixed-design repeated-measures ANOVA and mediation analyses were conducted.

The experimental group demonstrated significantly greater improvements in overall self-leadership from T1 to T2 compared to the control group, with a significant Group × Time interaction (F(2, 312) = 28.02, p < 0.001, η ² = 0.15, 95% CI [0.08, 0.23]). Significant interaction effects were also found for behavior-focused strategies (F(2, 312) = 22.31, p < 0.001, η ² = 0.12), natural reward strategies (F(2, 312) = 15.87, p < 0.001, η ² = 0.09), and constructive thought pattern strategies (F(2, 312) = 18.42, p < 0.001, η ² = 0.10). Gains were sustained at the 1-month follow-up. Mediation analysis revealed that improvements in digital literacy partially mediated the relationship between intervention condition and self-leadership change (indirect effect = 0.21, 95% CI [0.12, 0.31]).

These findings contribute preliminary experimental evidence suggesting that digital literacy training represents one potentially viable approach to fostering college students' self-leadership, with effects maintained at the 1-month follow-up, indicating short-term durability. Longer-term durability, replication with active control groups, and investigation of specific intervention components remain important directions for future research.