Integrating Digital Literacy in the Disciplines

Lauren Hays, Jenna Kammer, Lauren Hays, Jenna Kammer

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781642672152
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Hochschulausbildung

Digital literacy has become the vital competency that students need to master before graduating. This book provides rich examples of how to integrate it in disciplinary courses.

While many institutions are developing introductory courses to impart universal literacy (skills students need to know) and creative literacy (skills for creating new content), discipline-specific skills (skills needed to succeed within a specific discipline) are a vital extension to their learning and ability to apply digital literacy in different contexts. This book provides examples of how to integrate digital literacy across a wide variety of courses spanning many domains.

Rather than a wholly new core institutional outcome, digital literacy adds to the development of critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork skills by building students' capacities to assess online information so they can ethically share, communicate, or repurpose it through the appropriate use of available digital technologies. In short, it provides the vital digital dimension to their learning and the literacy skills which will be in increasing demand in their future lives.

Following introductory chapters providing context and a theoretical framework, the contributing authors from different disciplines share the digital competencies and skills needed within their fields, the strategies they use to teach them, and insights about the choices they made. What shines through the examples is that, regardless of the specificity of the disciplinary examples, they offer all readers a commonality of approach and a trove of ideas that can be adapted to other contexts.

This book constitutes a practical introduction for faculty interested in including opportunities to apply digital literacy to discipline-specific content. The book will benefit faculty developers and instructional designers who work with disciplinary faculty to integrate digital literacy. The book underscores the importance of preparing students at the course level to create, and be assessed on, digital content as fields are modernizing and delivery formats of assignments are evolving.

Domains covered include digital literacy in teacher education, writing, musicology, indigenous literary studies, communications, journalism, business information technology, strategic management, chemistry, biology, health sciences, optometry, school librarianship, and law.

The book demonstrates a range of approaches that can used to teach digital literacy skills in the classroom, including:

• Progressing from digital literacy to digital fluency
• Increasing digital literacy by creating digital content
• Assessment of digital literacy
• Identifying ethical considerations with digital literacy
• Sharing digital content outside of the classroom
• Identifying misinformation in digital communications
• Digitizing instructional practices, like lab notes and essays
• Reframing digital literacy from assumption to opportunity
• Preparing students to teach digital literacy to others
• Collaborating with other departments on campus to support digital literacy instruction
• Incorporating media into digital literacy (digital media literacy)
• Using digital storytelling and infographics to teach content knowledge]
• Weaving digital literacy throughout the curriculum of a program, and with increasing depth

1

DIGITAL LITERACY IN THE ACADEMY

Jenna Kammer, Todd Cherner, and Lauren Hays

As digital literacy expands in scope and influence, many institutions have developed programming specifically related to digital literacy. At the same time, individual instructors must work to identify technological change occurring within their fields and ensure students have the skills and habits of mind to adapt with these changes and apply the latest technology to their work. The concept of discipline-based digital literacy assumes that there are specific applications of digital literacy needed depending on the context in which one is working. However, before students can apply digital literacy within a discipline-specific context, they must have a foundational understanding of fundamental digital literacy.

Foundational Digital Literacy Skills

When looking across definitions, scholars have suggested that digital literacy represents a set of skills for purposely using technology. Hague and Payton (2011) explain digital literacy as “going beyond functional skills and the ability to complete basic internet searches and PowerPoint presentations. It means giving students the opportunity to use a wide range of technologies collaboratively, creatively and critically” (para. 7). From their perspective, digital literacy is not something done independently; rather, it requires multiple students working together to solve a problem or complete a task. Thatcher (2010) adds that digital literacy means “accessing, understanding, and appropriately using digital media in specific communications” (p. 169). This definition positions digital literacy as skills to be used when corresponding electronically with another entity of some kind—individuals, organizations, companies, and so on—and interpreting the quality, value, and truth of the correspondence before determining if and how to respond to it. A third example is from Ng (2014), who identifies digital literacy as consisting of technical, cognitive, and socioemotional elements. Ng explains technical as being able to operate the technology; cognitive as being able to locate and discern the credibility of digital information as well as staying within moral, legal, and ethical boundaries while using technology; and socioemotional as engaging in safe and responsible behaviors online. Though they each take a slant, the definitions cumulatively describe digital literacy as a set of skills for ethically using technology to locate and evaluate information, communicate with other individuals and entities, and work as teams for completing projects. Because digital literacy does not have a content-area distinction, it can be applied across the disciplines.

Campus-Wide Initiatives to Develop Digital Literacy

Many institutions have taken efforts campus-wide to target digital literacy within the student population, recognizing that college students need to develop skills related to critical thinking, fluency, collaboration, privacy, and security when working generally with information, as well as specific digital skills within their subject areas. The New Media Consortium’s digital literacy brief recommends that campuses strategically address digital literacy across the curriculum and within three levels of institutional implementation: universal literacy (skills all students need to know), creative literacy (skills for creating new content), and discipline-specific skills (skills needed to succeed within a specific discipline; Alexander et al., 2017).

Since the brief’s publication, many campuses have developed digital literacy initiatives to support development of these skills. The purpose of this book is to showcase the ways digital literacy is taught across the curriculum and within a variety of disciplines. However, foundational skills can be developed outside of content areas when digital literacy instruction occurs within and outside of specific disciplines in higher education. This chapter highlights current practices for teaching digital literacy with the inclusion of three vignettes that showcase examples of cross-disciplinary and cross-curricular digital literacy initiatives.

Vignette 1

In 2016, the University Libraries at Virginia Tech embarked on a more coordinated effort for digital literacy education. Since then, digital literacy initiatives have included developing shared language and goals through a digital literacy framework; aligning existing programs, such as 1st-year information literacy instruction and advanced skills for undergraduate researchers, to this framework; and developing a variety of new teaching partnerships and opportunities for student learning that extend our library’s traditional liaison areas.

Given the complex, varied nature of digital literacy, consensus-building has been an emphasis of digital literacy initiatives at Virginia Tech. Building on the work of an initial library task force, library faculty developed a framework to help visualize a multifaceted understanding of digital literacy. In this learner-centered framework, we identified seven core competency areas: identity and well-being, discovery, evaluation, ethics, creation and scholarship, communication and collaboration, and curation. These core competencies are informed by five key values: curiosity, reflection, equity and social justice, creativity, and participation. Ultimately our framework approaches digital literacy through the lens of multiple literacies, including information, media, and data. We developed this framework (see Figure 1.1) with feedback from Virginia Tech faculty and students, and it has been a useful starting point for digital literacy conversations, outreach, and lesson planning. (For more information on this framework, see the digital literacy framework toolkit; Feerrar et al., 2019.)

Current digital literacy initiatives at the University Libraries reflect many different areas of this framework, ranging from media design and creation to inquiry and academic research to exploring identity and well-being online. In particular, digital wellness has been an area of recent curriculum development and partnership. We have developed a series of workshops, including “Build Your Online Presence With ePortfolios,” “Fact-Checking,” “Digital Self-Care,” “Declutter Your Digital Stuff,” and “Good Passwords.” These have been offered as open, drop-in workshops as well as adapted in partnership with specific courses and cocurricular programs, ranging from disciplinary 1st-year experiences, wellness peer educators, graduate teaching assistants, and living-learning communities. Since the summer of 2019, we have taught 50 digital wellness workshops or class sessions for over 1,000 students.

Integrating topics like digital wellness into our instructional repertoire has expanded what we might have initially imagined digital literacy to include. While sometimes challenging to define, an expansive approach to digital literacy has meant opportunities to connect with learners across disciplines in new ways and to reflect more deeply on both their shared and unique needs.

Figure 1.1. Literacy framework.

Note: © University Libraries at Virginia Tech. Reprinted with permission.

Julia Feerrar
Head, Digital Literacy Initiatives
University Libraries
Virginia Tech

Vignette 2

In 2017, Vanderbilt University identified the need to develop a shared understanding of digital literacies on campus in order to further support the educational technologies pillar of the university’s strategic plan, as well as to ensure that students are prepared to participate as global digital citizens upon graduation.

Under the lead of the associate provost for digital learning, the Digital Literacy Committee was charged with (a) providing a definition of digital literacy that will apply to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students in the context of their degree programs and professions and (b) recommending curricular and cocurricular initiatives to facilitate the development of the digitally literate student. The committee included a wide range of representatives from across campus, including the libraries; the Center for Teaching, digital learning and entrepreneurship offices; faculty from medicine, education, arts and science, engineering, and management. The varied representation allowed for unique disciplinary and functional perspectives, which resulted in a multidimensional definition of digital literacy.

This definition focuses on what a digitally literate Vanderbilt student looks like and incorporates elements related to computational thinking; the ability to “produce, curate, share and critically consume and synthesize information in a variety of digital (and non-digital) forms” (Vanderbilt University, 2017); and the more ethical side of digital literacy, such as critical reflection on an individual’s own consumption and creation of mediated communication.

The committee also sought to identify how elements of digital literacies are integrated into the curriculum, as curricular support was identified as a key component of creating a successful digital literacy program. The committee canvassed programs across all undergraduate colleges to determine which courses included coursework related to (a) critical digital literacy, (b) digital visualization and production, and/or (c) computational thinking. Courses including a digital literacy component were tagged on the university’s course catalog. Students taking 5 hours’ worth of credit in any given category receive a digital literacy micro-credential (badge). Close to 150 undergraduate courses were identified as fitting within the three defined areas of digital literacies.

Future efforts include identifying a micro-credentialing pathway through cocurricular endeavors, including workshops and self-directed learning opportunities provided through the libraries and other student life departments. The work of micro-credentialing is still in progress, but the unified definition of digital literacy has highlighted the crucial need for students to develop the skills and mindsets necessary to succeed in a complex, digital world.

Melissa Mallon
Director of Peabody Education Library
Director of Teaching & Learning
Vanderbilt University Libraries
Vanderbilt University

Vignette 3

During the fall 2020 semester New Mexico State University (NMSU) constructed its first digital literacy course to help students navigate the sudden transition to online remote learning. The 8-week course, Digital Literacy: Navigating the Digital Learning Environment, came amid an ongoing transition to online learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. It was critical that all students, especially 1st-year students, understood how to be effective, successful, and responsible online learners. The purpose of the course was to help students define digital literacy, understand what that entailed, safely navigate on- and off-campus digital resources, and use technology to support their social, professional, and academic success. This was how NMSU demonstrated commitment to educational access, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Course Learning Outcomes

In this course, students will:

• Demonstrate technology skills and fluency.

• Apply digital literacy strategies for multiple purposes.

• Identify digital literacy issues.

• Use digital citizenship skills and knowledge.

Through the collaborative efforts of several departments, which included Academic Technology, Career Services, Instructional Innovation and Quality, the library, faculty from the 2-year college (Doña Ana Community College [DACC]), and graduate students a course was designed that was not only informative but also engaging to learners. The goal was to foster real-life skills for use in academ...