Five Questions About.....Digital literacy and its relation to higher education
Jeff Swain, instructional designer with Education Technology Services, discusses what digital literacy is, how digital literacy has changed how young people communicate, and how it will effect higher education.
Jeff Swain, instructional designer, Education Technology Services
Exactly what is digital literacy?
Digital literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use multimedia materials in conjunction with text in varying contexts. In reality it is the standard definition of literacy. I just updated it to include the use of multimedia (audio, images, and movies) as part of the conversation.
Why is it important in education?It's important for us in education to respond to this new kind of literacy because it is how the rest of the world is talking. Our students today, and the kids behind them, talk to each other primarily through multimedia. Text has become supplemental to the conversation. For example, a kid will make a video and post it to YouTube and his friends will respond to it by taking that video and changing it in someway and post it back up as a reply. They'll use short text comments to supplement the main conversation.
But also, it is the world in which these kids are headed that is talking this way. Last fall, The Economist magazine released the results of a survey they did on the future of higher education. In that survey business leaders from around the world indicated that they want their future employees to be able to converse this way. If it is our role to prepare students for the world, then I believe we must further their ability to converse digitally.
How can a faculty member make themselves more digitally literate?
Well, we need to understand the characteristics of digital conversation. It is generally a more active conversation and it's certainly not a one-way conversation. So we need to start thinking of teaching and learning as more of a collaborative endeavor between faculty and students. It is also not text based. Too often when we try to do something collaborative, like use a discussion forum for ongoing conversation, it falls flat because we are still thinking in text. We need to be thinking in multimedia.
How can they apply what they learned in the classroom?
Fortunately, a lot of the tools we already use, such as ANGEL and the blog platform, support this kind of conversation. And, I think this is key, both tools are easy to use. Technically, it is fairly easy for any of us to become "digitally literate." The real challenge is in changing our mindset.
What is an up and coming trend you see in digital literacy?
Mobility. Devices are smaller and more powerful than ever before. Did you see the commercial for the latest iPhone? It has copy-paste capability with the touch of a finger. Amazing. More and more applications are being designed to fit the mobile format and we need to be thinking along the same lines. The best designed course will mean nothing if it cannot fit in the palm of a student's hand.
