Situating the "Why" of Digital Literacy

What is Digital Literacy?

In a general sense, digital literacy comprises knowledge, skills, capacities, and even attitudes that enable and empower individuals to flourish in an increasingly digital world--and to do so in ways that are safe and appropriate to their cultures and contexts (geography, age, etc.).

But there are a range of related concepts that really start to pull at both the depths and the problems we are facing in digitally-saturated world:

  • digital competency
  • digital skills
  • data literacy
  • information literacy
  • ai literacy
  • digital fluency
  • digital agility
So, perhaps the question isn't "What is Digital Literacy" but rather why do these (or should these) collection of concepts & considerations matter to us?

College to Career Readiness

Students Facing a Transformative Job Market

"Increasingly, however, emerging technologies such as generative AI are reshaping workforce demands and employers are placing greater emphasis on 'soft' skills - World Economic Forum - The Future of Jobs Report 2023 (44)

Responsibility in Education

  • INCLUSIVITY - The digital divide is most pronounced across issues of Race, Gender, and Class. When we fail to integrate digital literacy into higher education, we create double-jeopardy digital inequity (McLay & Reyes, 2019): a process by which we unintentionally widen that gap.
  • ENGAGEMENT - Bringing digital literacy/digital creativity practices in the classroom has a positive impact on student engagement, performance, and retention. This is even more pronounced (nearly 2 times more) for BIPOC and first generation students (Civitas, Adobe, and UT San Antonio, 2020).
  • ACCOUNTABILITY - In a recent survey, over 80% of Students, Faculty, and Administrators agree/strongly agree that teaching digital literacy skills should be part of the curriculum (Chronicle of Higher Ed, 2022).

Empowering Student Success

  • When we give students the opportunity to learn digital literacy skills and new media authoring practices, we quite literally expand their capacities for expression. This helps students not only to tell better stories but, more importantly, take on greater (or different) degrees of agency.
  • When we invite students to create with digital technologies, we give them access to course content, ideas, and practices in new ways. This is not only a matter of what they might make (i.e., a podcast), but fundamentally how they might engage a given course’s content.
  • When working in and across digital modalities, students can have meaningful success outside traditional modes of academic discourse. This is especially important for DEI efforts, including 1st gen, non-traditional, and international students, for many of whom traditional academic discourse can be a major hurdle if not insurmountable barrier.
  • When creating digital "things," students actively want to share their work. There is a sort of built-in public-facing condition when making digital things that creates a sense of a real world audience: i.e., real people in the world reading, hearing, viewing, scrolling through, interacting with the work. Digital creators, students and faculty alike, see and feel the reality of that persistent digital audience condition, adding a dimension not present in most other traditional course assignments.

Other Avenues for Student Success

Tanya Patel - 10 and 2, Are You?

Interactive webtext created using Adobe Photoshop and wix.com

Additional Student Projects

Multimedia Essays (Express Webpages)

Journal/Magazine Articles: Research-based Writing

Image Engagements: Infographics/Composites/Posters

Audio/Podcast Engagements

Video Engagements