Digital Learning for Civic and Identity Development in Higher Education: A Systematic Scoping Review
Abstract
Background: Digital learning increasingly mediates how university students encounter public issues, participate in dialogue, evaluate information, and negotiate cultural belonging. However, evidence concerning civic and identity development remains dispersed across digital-citizenship, virtual-exchange, intercultural-learning, and cultural-identity literatures. Objective: This review mapped forms of digital learning used in higher education, associated outcomes and mechanisms, and evidence gaps relevant to future research on Chinese national awareness. Methods: Following JBI guidance, PRISMA-ScR, PRISMA 2020, and PRISMA-S, OpenAlex, ERIC, and Crossref were searched on 20 August 2026 for English-language, DOI-verifiable records published from 2020 to the search date. The search identified 2,994 database records, and citation checking identified one additional record. After removal of 475 duplicates and 2,360 records through rule-based preliminary triage, 160 titles and abstracts and 45 full texts were manually screened. Eligible studies were charted and narratively synthesized. Results: Thirty-seven studies were included. Evidence clustered into structured civic and digital-citizenship instruction, virtual exchange and dialogic learning, digital narrative and cultural-identity work, and enabling capabilities and institutional conditions. Structured inquiry, source evaluation, guided reflection, sustained dialogue, and student production were associated with stronger civic knowledge, digital responsibility, intercultural perspective-taking, cultural confidence, or identity articulation. Affective and durable identity outcomes were less consistently demonstrated than knowledge and skills. Conclusion: Pedagogy, rather than technology access alone, was the principal developmental mechanism. Evidence remains limited by heterogeneous measures, short interventions, self-report designs, uneven geographic coverage, ranked-result retrieval, and few controlled or longitudinal studies. Future research should distinguish technology use from pedagogical transformation, preserve boundaries among national, cultural, digital, and global identities, and test longer-term outcomes with context-sensitive measures.