How Do Students Value the Importance of Skills Needed in the Digital Age? A Preliminary Study Using MDS and MDU Analyses
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Abstract
21st century skills are important for personnel preparation. However, the frameworks of the foresaid skills that scholars stipulated are broad and varied with the perspectives of those giving the definitions. In today’s advanced world, some skills are more importance and needed to be more focused than others. For these reasons, the purpose of this research was to study how students value the importance of skills needed in the digital age and their perspectives on which skills should receive priority concerns. In this research, data were collected from 139 public and private university students, including undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students. The research instruments were questionnaires in two different forms: comparison and ranking order. Data were analyzed by using MDS and MDU analysis in grouping the participants’ opinions. Furthermore, this research compared the results of using two data collection methods to determine which method would yield more appropriate results. The findings showed that both methods yielded similar and also different grouping results of skills needed in the digital age. The MDS analysis was found to be more fit for the data collected from a ranking order questionnaire, whereas the MDU analysis was more fit for the data collected from a comparison questionnaire.
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