Digital Literacy
December 12, 2016
I’ve been thinking a lot about digital literacy. While the term “digital literacy” is often employed loosely (and with multiple meanings), I understand digital literacy to be the broadest sense of a person’s ability to consume, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies. If you search any university’s website, you’ll see that while everyone is concerned about digital literacy, most universities are unaware of exactly how to implement digital literacy as a guiding principle.
Today, I’d like to explain the route I hope Vanderbilt will take to systematically incorporate digital literacy into the undergraduate educational experience. There are at least five areas to consider as we move forward:
- a guiding definition,
- an assessment of our student’s working knowledge,
- support for faculty and staff,
- a curricular structure, and
- the importance of career readiness.
First, we need to define digital literacy. Since digital technology pervades daily life (e.g., we read news online, we watch videos to learn new skills), it could be said that we are all digitally literate. Obviously, we mean something more than that. If we want students to be both producers and critical consumers of digital content, we must incorporate these elements into Vanderbilt’s definition of digital literacy.
Second, we need to take a baseline assessment of the student population’s digital literacy. It’s a common misconception that today’s undergraduate students are digitally literate based on generation alone, and that their digital savvy far exceeds that of our faculty. While I’m sure this is true in some dimensions, I’m equally sure that it is not a universal truth. What do our students know about producing and archiving digital content? In what ways are they skilled as information consumers? To understand the pedagogy of digital literacy will require an exploratory survey of our students’ current digital literacy fitness and aptitude.
Third, we need to take a baseline assessment of our faculty and staff populations’ digital literacy. I anticipate there is a wide range of digital literacy for faculty and staff – from faculty and staff who are GIS experts, to those who run podcasts, to those who do little more than utilize Vanderbilt’s Course Management System. The range of expertise is wide and varied. What do faculty know in general? What do they need to know given our goals? How can we support faculty if we expect them to instruct our students in digital literacy? Again, these are questions that we need to ask with our definition and goals firmly in mind.
Fourth, we need to implement digital literacy instruction. Do we designate certain courses as “digital literacy” qualified and institute a digital literacy curricular requirement, as many schools do with the teaching of writing? Do we supply students with tools and simply encourage the production of digital content in their courses and in their co-curricular immersion experiences? There are multiple ways to reach our goals, with varying levels of success. How will we assess our success?
Finally, we need to consider the benefits of equipping our students to be digitally literate in the workplace upon graduation. If we want to prepare our students to be digitally literate in their future professions, we may need to be more “tool oriented” in our approach to combine the teaching of a critical mindset to produce and consume digital information with the teaching of very specific skills essential in the workplace.
In my mind, it is not a question of if digital literacy becomes an important element of the Vanderbilt educational experience, but a matter of when and in what way. While digital literacy is an embedded and inherent element of the student experience, we need to embark on a more systematic, thoughtful, and rigorous approach. And, we will.