Digital Literacy Skill Sets

The nature of knowledge is changing and, in this digital age, our definition of basic literacy urgently needs expanding. With an estimated 90% of UK jobs requiring some level of IT competency, the notion of digital literacy – those capabilities that equip an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society – is one that needs to be taken seriously by colleges and universities (par 1).

To be successful in our daily lives and in a global workforce, Americans need pathways to acquire expertise and form  meaningful connections to peers and mentors.

To remain globally competitive and develop engaged citizens, our schools should weave 21st century competencies and expertise throughout the learning experience.  These include the development of critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and adding multimedia communication into the teaching of traditional academic subjects.5 In addition, learners should have the opportunity to develop a sense of agency in their learning and the belief that they are capable of succeeding in school.

Beyond these essential core academic competencies, there is a growing body of research on the importance of non-cognitive competencies as they relate to academic success.7,8,9 Non-cognitive competencies include  successful navigation through tasks such as forming relationships and solving everyday problems.  They also include development of self-awareness, control of impulsivity, executive function, working cooperatively, and caring about oneself and others.

Technology can enable personalized learning or experiences that are more engaging
and relevant.

Technology can help organize learning around real-world challenges and project-based learning using a wide variety of digital learning devices and resources to show competency with complex concepts and content.

closing the digital divide alone will not transform learning.
We must also close the digital use divide by ensuring all students understand how to use technology as a tool to engage in creative, productive, life-long learning rather than simply consuming passive content.

Without thoughtful intervention and attention to the way technology is used for learning, the digital use divide could grow even as access to technology in schools increases.

Nicky Hockly of The Consultants-E explains that while technical skills are a part of digital literacy, the social practices surrounding our use of technology are just as important. She goes on to explain a theory that breaks digital literacy down into four different categories:

    Language- print and texting as well as visual, multimedia, and coding literacies.
    Information- search, tagging, and critical thinking/filtering literacies fall into this category
    Connections-social skills and networking, collaboration, digital safety, and intercultural awareness.
    (Re)design- remix literacy, encompassing all of the above literacies, but also including an awareness of copyright, fair use and the legal issues surrounding remixes and mashups.

A Digitally Literate Person:

• Possesses the variety of skills – technical and cognitive – required to find, understand, evaluate, create, and communicate digital information in a wide variety of formats;
• Is able to use diverse technologies appropriately and effectively to retrieve information, interpret results, and judge the quality of that information;
• Understands the relationship between technology, life-long learning, personal privacy, and stewardship of information;
• Uses these skills and the appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, colleagues, family, and on occasion, the general public; and
• Uses these skills to actively participate in civic society and contribute to a vibrant, informed, and engaged community.

With the emergence of social media, individuals who are digitally literate now have a major voice online.[14] Websites like Facebook and Twitter, as well as personal websites and blogs, have enabled a new type of journalism that is subjective, personal, and "represents a global conversation that is connected through its community of readers."[15] These online communities foster group interactivity among the digitally literate. Social media also help users establish a digital identity or a "symbolic digital representation of identity attributes."[16] Without digital literacy or the assistance of someone who is digitally literate, one cannot possess a personal digital identity. This is closely allied to web literacy.

Notes

14. Mckee-Waddell, S. s. (2015). Digital Literacy: Bridging the Gap with Digital Writing Tools. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 82(1), 26-31.

15. Longardner, Tara (2015). "US News". The Growing Need for Technical and Digital Literacy.

16. nashoa (January 6, 2014). "Social networks using web 2.0". IBM.

 

The ability to use digital technology, communication tools or networks to locate, evaluate, use and create information.

The ability to understand and use information in multiple formats from a wide range of sources when it is presented via computers.

A person’s ability to perform tasks effectively in a digital environment... Literacy includes the ability to read and interpret media, to reproduce data and images through digital manipulation, and to evaluate and apply new knowledge gained from digital environments.

Green: The lego blocks of the web, the technical concepts

(These three categories were inspired by the Scratch Curriculum‘s Computational Concepts / Practices / Perspectives categories.)

The authors provide a review of the literature and then assemble a very detailed set of digital literacy categories and skill sets.  Includes an extensive references page.

Both Pegrum and Belshaw make clear that digital literacies are not a checklist of discrete skills that are simply acquired and then ticked off.
Although digital literacies do include procedural skills (such as how to insert an image into a word-processed document), they also include less clearly defined skills, such as communicating effectively in distributed virtual communities. Bawden (2008) suggests that it is more useful to conceive of digital literacies as a state or condition that changes over time. As technology evolves and changes, so new skills and literacies emerge and become increasingly important (par. 10).

Comprehensive biographical and bibliographical information for author Nicky Hockly, Director of Pedagogy at The Consultants-E, an expert in digital literacy.

Through its VALUE Initiative, AAC&U has developed a set of rubrics to assess many of the following learning outcomes. Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies, students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

• Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts

Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring

Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including

• Inquiry and analysis
• Critical and creative thinking
• Written and oral communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Information literacy
• Teamwork and problem solving

Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance

Personal and Social Responsibility, Including

• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global
• Intercultural knowledge and competence
• Ethical reasoning and action
• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning

Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges

Integrative and Applied Learning, Including

• Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies

Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems.

Wired magazine's mock university courses aimed at arousing awareness of higher ed's inadequacies in the area of digital literacy instruction.

Levy identifies the following digital literacy skill sets:

1. Moving Beyond Google

• Teach students to evaluate and question their sources.
• Teach students how to draw a strong conclusion.
• Push students to new levels of creativity.

2. Teaching Digital Citizenship

• [Avoiding] Academic Plagarism
• Cyberbullying

3. Closing the Digital Divide
4. Expanding Conceptions of the Digital World
5. Enabling Differentiation
6. Making Thoughtful Cultural and Platform Decisions
7. Improving the Technology

When discussing the digital divide it is helpful to have a definition or understanding of what this term means.  The term is often used to describe the differences in access to ICTs.  First mentions of the digital divide “appeared about 1995, in documents such as ‘Falling through the net’” (Gutierrez & Gamboa 2008).  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) “define the divide as the ‘gap between individuals, households, business and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regards to their opportunities to access information and communication technologies and to their use for a wide variety of countries’” (Gutierrez & Gamboa 2008).  It is important to understand that the digital divide is extremely complex and is a dynamic concept.  There is not a single divide but multiple divides and therefore there are numerous ways to measure the divide; the most popular measure is the assessment of the extent to which people have access to the Internet.  In addition reports suggest that the inequalities of access are evolving and taking on new forms, specifically in regards to the digital divide between the speed and quality of access to ICTs (ITU, 2007) (par 2).

A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created). Forms of participatory culture include:
Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards, metagaming, game clans, or MySpace).
Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).
Collaborative Problem-solving — working together in teams, formal and informal, to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative
reality gaming, spoiling).
Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging) (3).

Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement (4).

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation
and discovery
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world
processes
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient
details.
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand
mental capacities
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with
others toward a common goal
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information
sources
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information
across multiple modalities
Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting
multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms (4)

Digital citizenship can be defined as the norms of appropriate, responsible behavior with regard to technology use.  

1.   Digital Access:   full electronic participation in society. 
Technology users need to be aware that not everyone has the same opportunities when it comes to technology.  Working toward equal digital rights and supporting electronic access is the starting point of Digital Citizenship. Digital exclusion makes it difficult to grow as a society increasingly using these tools. Helping to provide and expand access to technology should be goal of all digital citizens.  Users need to keep in mind that there are some that may have limited access, so other resources may need to be provided.  To become productive citizens, we need to be committed to make sure that no one is denied digital access.

2.   Digital Commerce:   electronic buying and selling of goods. 
Technology users need to understand that a large share of market economy is being done electronically. Legitimate and legal exchanges are occurring, but the buyer or seller needs to be aware of the issues associated with it. The mainstream availability of Internet purchases of toys, clothing, cars, food, etc. has become commonplace to many users. At the same time, an equal amount of goods and services which are in conflict with the laws or morals of some countries are surfacing (which might include activities such as illegal downloading, pornography, and gambling). Users need to learn about how to be effective consumers in a new digital economy.  

3.   Digital Communication:   electronic exchange of information. 
One of the significant changes within the digital revolution is a person’s ability to communicate with other people. In the 19th century, forms of communication were limited. In the 21st century, communication options have exploded to offer a wide variety of choices (e.g., e-mail, cellular phones, instant messaging).  The expanding digital communication options have changed everything because people are able to keep in constant communication with anyone else. Now everyone has the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with anyone from anywhere and anytime. Unfortunately, many users have not been taught how to make appropriate decisions when faced with so many different digital communication options.

4.   Digital Literacy:   process of teaching and learning about technology and the use of technology. 
While schools have made great progress in the area of technology infusion, much remains to be done. A renewed focus must be made on what technologies must be taught as well as how it should be used. New technologies are finding their way into the work place that are not being used in schools (e.g., Videoconferencing, online sharing spaces such as wikis). In addition, workers in many different occupations need immediate information (just-in-time information). This process requires sophisticated searching and processing skills (i.e., information literacy). Learners must be taught how to learn in a digital society. In other words, learners must be taught to learn anything, anytime, anywhere.  Business, military, and medicine are excellent examples of how technology is being used differently in the 21st century. As new technologies emerge, learners need to learn how to use that technology quickly and appropriately. Digital Citizenship involves educating people in a new way— these individuals need a high degree of information literacy skills. 

5. Digital Etiquette:   electronic standards of conduct or procedure.
Technology users often see this area as one of the most pressing problems when dealing with Digital Citizenship. We recognize inappropriate behavior when we see it, but before people use technology they do not learn digital etiquette (i.e., appropriate conduct).   Many people feel uncomfortable talking to others about their digital etiquette.  Often rules and regulations are created or the technology is simply banned to stop inappropriate use. It is not enough to create rules and policy, we must teach everyone to become responsible digital citizens in this new society.

6.   Digital Law:   electronic responsibility for actions and deeds 
Digital law deals with the ethics of technology within a society. Unethical use manifests itself in form of theft and/or crime. Ethical use manifests itself in the form of abiding by the laws of society. Users need to understand that stealing or causing damage to other people’s work, identity, or property online is a crime. There are certain rules of society that users need to be aware in a ethical society. These laws apply to anyone who works or plays online. Hacking into others information, downloading illegal music, plagiarizing, creating destructive worms, viruses or creating Trojan Horses, sending spam, or stealing anyone’s identify or property is unethical.

7.   Digital Rights & Responsibilities:   those freedoms extended to everyone in a digital world.
Just as in the American Constitution where there is a Bill of Rights, there is a basic set of rights extended to every digital citizen. Digital citizens have the right to privacy, free speech, etc. Basic digital rights must be addressed, discussed, and understood in the digital world.  With these rights also come responsibilities as well.  Users must help define how the technology is to be used in an appropriate manner.  In a digital society these two areas must work together for everyone to be productive. 

8.   Digital Health & Wellness:   physical and psychological well-being in a digital technology world.
Eye safety, repetitive stress syndrome, and sound ergonomic practices are issues that need to be addressed in a new technological world.  Beyond the physical issues are those of the psychological issues that are becoming more prevalent such as Internet addiction.  Users need to be taught that there are inherent dangers of technology. Digital Citizenship includes a culture where technology users are taught how to protect themselves through education and training. 

9.   Digital Security (self-protection):   electronic precautions to guarantee safety. 
In any society, there are individuals who steal, deface, or disrupt other people. The same is true for the digital community. It is not enough to trust other members in the community for our own safety. In our own homes, we put locks on our doors and fire alarms in our houses to provide some level of protection. The same must be true for the digital security. We need to have virus protection, backups of data, and surge control of our equipment. As responsible citizens, we must protect our information from outside forces that might cause disruption or harm.