Didactic Opportunities for Developing Digital Literacy and Information Competence of University Students in The Context of The Digital Transformation of Higher Education

Abstract

This article presents a systematic literature review and theoretical-analytical synthesis of the didactic opportunities available for developing digital literacy and information competence among university students under conditions of accelerating digital transformation of higher education. Rather than reporting new primary data, the study synthesizes converging evidence from ten peer-reviewed and internationally recognized sources in order to build an integrative didactic model; its contribution is analytical and synthetic rather than experimental. The relevance of the problem is determined by the growing gap between the volume of digital information students must process and the level of methodological support that universities currently provide for forming the skills required to search, evaluate, create, and ethically use digital content. The purpose of the study is to identify and systematize, through explicit thematic coding of the reviewed literature, the didactic conditions, methods, and organizational forms that most effectively contribute to the development of students' digital literacy and information competence within the educational process of a higher education institution. As a result, the article substantiates a structural-didactic model comprising four interrelated components - cognitive-informational, technological-operational, communicative-collaborative, and value-reflective - derived from a transparent coding of the source literature, and describes the pedagogical conditions, active learning methods, and assessment tools that support their formation. The synthesis indicates that the systematic, cross-curricular integration of information-literacy tasks, combined with mediated self-regulated learning activities and structured formative feedback, is associated with measurably stronger gains in students' digital competence than isolated, short-term training interventions reported in the reviewed studies. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using the proposed model and its didactic toolkit for the design of university curricula, elective modules, and teacher-training programs aimed at strengthening students' readiness for professional activity in a digitalized information environment; empirical validation of the model within a specific institutional setting remains a task for future research.