{"id":93,"date":"2016-12-12T14:39:33","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T19:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/?p=93"},"modified":"2016-12-12T14:39:33","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T19:39:33","slug":"digital-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/2016\/12\/digital-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>December 12, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about digital literacy. While the term \u201cdigital literacy\u201d is often employed loosely (and with multiple meanings), I understand digital literacy to be the broadest sense of a person\u2019s ability to consume, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies. If you search any university\u2019s website, you\u2019ll see that while everyone is <em>concerned<\/em> about digital literacy, most universities are unaware of exactly how to implement digital literacy as a guiding principle.<\/p>\n<p>Today, I\u2019d 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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a guiding definition,<\/li>\n<li>an assessment of our student\u2019s working knowledge,<\/li>\n<li>support for faculty and staff,<\/li>\n<li>a curricular structure, and<\/li>\n<li>the importance of career readiness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>First, we need to define digital literacy. <\/strong>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\u2019s definition of digital literacy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Second, we need to take a baseline assessment of the student population\u2019s digital literacy.<\/strong> It\u2019s a common misconception that today\u2019s undergraduate students are digitally literate based on generation alone, and that their digital savvy far exceeds that of our faculty. While I\u2019m sure this is true in some dimensions, I\u2019m 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?\u00a0 To understand the pedagogy of digital literacy will require an exploratory survey of our students\u2019 current digital literacy fitness and aptitude.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Third, we need to take a baseline assessment of our faculty and staff populations\u2019 digital literacy<\/strong>. I anticipate there is a wide range of digital literacy for faculty and staff \u2013 from faculty and staff who are GIS experts, to those who run podcasts, to those who do little more than utilize Vanderbilt\u2019s Course Management System.\u00a0 The range of expertise is wide and varied.\u00a0 What do faculty know in general?\u00a0 What do they need to know given our goals?\u00a0 How can we support faculty if we expect them to instruct our students in digital literacy?\u00a0 Again, these are questions that we need to ask with our definition and goals firmly in mind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fourth, we need to implement digital literacy instruction.<\/strong> Do we designate certain courses as \u201cdigital literacy\u201d qualified and institute a digital literacy curricular requirement, as many schools do with the teaching of writing?\u00a0 Do we supply students with tools and simply encourage the production of digital content in their courses and in their co-curricular immersion experiences?\u00a0 There are multiple ways to reach our goals, with varying levels of success. How will we assess our success?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Finally, we need to consider the benefits of equipping our students to be digitally literate in the workplace upon graduation<\/strong>. If we want to prepare our students to be digitally literate in their future professions, we may need to be more \u201ctool oriented\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>In my mind, it is not a question of <em>if<\/em> digital literacy becomes an important element of the Vanderbilt educational experience, but a matter of <em>when and in what way<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>December 12, 2016 I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about digital literacy. While the term \u201cdigital literacy\u201d is often employed loosely (and with multiple meanings), I understand digital literacy to be the broadest sense of a person\u2019s ability to consume, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using information technologies. If you search any university\u2019s website, you\u2019ll&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/johnsloop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}