Digital literacy of adults education needs for the full exercise of citizenship

This article presents an exploratory study undertaken during the initial phase of the Adults Digital Literacy Project (LIDIA), aimed at identifying situations where adults are hindered from exercising their full citizenship, due to their lack of digital technologies knowledge. Within the framework of an action-research methodology, a questionnaire was applied to 106 adults, aged between 26 and 92 years, resident in Portugal. From the data analysis, it was possible to establish 13 categories of needs within the scope of digital literacy of adults, including a set of references stating their desire to handle their bureaucratic issues via the Internet. These results constitute the basis for the proposal of a set of activities with digital technologies, geared towards promoting digital citizenship, around six broad learning areas: 1) information; 2) communication; 3) production; 4) leisure; 5) daily tasks; and 6) and digital identity security - the latter, considered to have a cross-cutting nature and therefore should be considered integrated in one or several domains of learning.