1.

Introduction
1.1 Background
Digital literacy is the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and
communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills [1]. DIL is using digital technology,
communication tools and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create and communicate
information in order to function in a knowledge society. Digital literacy is increasingly being recognized as a
critical requirement for 21st-century life regardless of where one lives or works. Being digitally literate means
more than simply knowing how to operate a computer [2].

Digital literacy is important because we live in a tech-dependent world. The internet, search engines, email
programs, blogs, and online videos have all contributed to our expanding knowledge and capabilities. Digital
literacy is the ability of the community to use information and communication technologies (ICT) to find,
evaluate, create, and communicate information. This requires the community to have both cognitive and
technical skills. Digital literacy will help in bridging the digital divide within the community. Creating better
national connectivity through various government development initiatives is one of the major requirements for
digital literacy. In addition to utilizing the existing connectivity, basic computer skills and high-level cognitive
skills for finding, evaluating, ethically using, creating, and sharing information are required for digitally inclusive
communities.

The government therefore, views ICTs within a wider context of its socio-economic development goals. The goal
is to make Ethiopia an ICT-driven country able to function effectively in a networked global economy [3]. The
project called SchoolNet arises from the need to integrate ICTs into Ethiopia’s educational system. It is designed
to develop a wide-area network linking all schools in the country and making Internet and online education
accessible to them. The initiative constitutes a key component of the e-government program and aims at the
application of ICTs for the purposes of teaching and learning [4].

Nowadays, digital literacy is more than the ability to use digital technology, such as a desktop or smartphone, but
rather understanding and creating within digital environments. Digital literacy includes using communication
tools and networks to locate, evaluate, and create information. Digital literacy allows someone to interpret,
read, and create media – it helps develop a fundamental understanding of computers. There are many
characteristics and skills to learn and acquire to become digitally literate. This project focus on the wide concept
of the digital information literacy including the digital marketing, Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and project
management. Digital literacy has become increasingly important and a necessity for everyone as our world relies
more and more on electronic and digitally connected devices.
As a discipline, digital marketing communications is difficult to place. Unlike web design, it does not rely on an
explicit knowledge of coding concepts or issues normally associated with traditional computing. However, there
is an aspect of digital literacy that is required by virtue of the change of communications channels that come

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with the digital domain. It is the literacy of these channels that we focus on here. A key issue in education
relating to digital media platforms is speed of change. New platforms emerge frequently, existing platforms
evolve rapidly, and best practice use of these platforms changes regularly as practicing professionals develop
their craft and understand the use of such tools over time. Such change created a challenge for the module team
– a need to expose students to the evolving digital media platforms in a critical way and deliver the academic
content of the program.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technologies have been significantly addressed in managerial literature, few studies investigated the
effects of digital literacy.

1.2 Project Initiation

While a digital literacy initiative can be planned in a wider and continuous program, as a starting point, Ethiopian
higher education institutions with ICT related programs can engage in identifying small medium enterprise,
government administrative organs, secondary and primary school communities in their locality to provide basic
Information Technology related trainings which will lead to better digital literacy with the available resources.
Based on this the country formulate the 2025 digital strategies to enhance the digital skills in a community level.
Moreover, higher education have responsibility to provide digital literacy trainings are required by the identified
community members. This is important as the existing infrastructure and connectivity will impact feasibility of
the digital literacy training.

Ethiopian higher learning institutions (HLI) as well as TVET Centers can engage in providing digital literacy to
owners of small and medium businesses (SMEs), local administration leaders and workers, as well as high school
administrators and teachers. The program can also extend to students and citizens at large. In our project area

we have observed that there is a gap related to ERP; digital marketing and project marketing more over
the responsible bodies have not given attention to organize the practical training on digital literacy.

As we all have been experiencing and observing that different BSc and TVET College graduate in
Tourism and different disciplines it is expected that they know some basic computer related skills on
their own discipline. But the study shows most of graduate students didn’t have digital literacy practical
skills on their area of studies. This shows, those graduate students are not fit with the global market
and industries need due to insufficient computer related skills and this degrades the quality of service
and product of college or University. Therefore this project is needed due to the following reasons:

 We are looking the University and TVET college hotel and tourism BSc and level graduate have no practical
skill on different hospitality ERP software. .

 Different projects in Ethiopia talks much of years even if not accomplished on deadline due to the
luck of project management skills and PM software skills.
 Due to lack of knowledge and skills of digital market there is no any hard currency and much of the
jobless of the society.
 The community gap on digital literacy have multiple challenges to economic, political and social
impacts.

To this end, the project is in line with the community service agendas of the university. It plays an
important role for community engagement and life learning of the community and increase services
and products.

1.3 Need assessment

The project team conducted need assessment on selected town and woreda’s which has graduate of
hotel and tourism, marketing and different engineering graduates. The assessment data were collected
from key informants of hotel managers, project managers, and zone and woredas sector office officers
and through unstructured interview and focused group discussion. As a result, the project teams
understand there is a need to give a tanning on hospitality ERP tools, digital marketing and project
management hands on tanning.
1.4 Objective
The main objective of this project is to deliver hands on training on ERP, Digital marketing and project
management for West Gondar and Central Gondar Zone selected Woredas’ TVET and University
graduates. In particular, the project attempts to address the following specific objectives:

 To gather proper information about the problem,

 To identify the gap on digital information literacy
 To prepare training manuals for the training
 To provide the training for target audience
 To do post training assessment

1.5 Target Groups/Beneficiaries

 Students in formal learning from university and TVET on selected area

 Hotel managers
 TVET staffs and students
 Small and Medium Enterprises owners and employees especially on hotel and tourism and project
 Government administrative organs
 Individual persons currently working and needing digital marketing, ERP and Project management skills
for their current role or future job prospects
 Individuals who are not working but desire to build their digital literacy skills and be able to use online
market and different business startups.