Higher Education and Assessment: Digital Literacy
TCTC's Digital Literacy Assessment Rubric
We define digital literacy as the ability to:
- Locate, analyze, use, and present information
- Select and use technology.
As part of the 21st Century Skills General Education Outcomes, students will demonstrate digital literacy through any of the possible student products:
- Word-processed document
- Oral presentation
- Video
- Visual aids (e.g., charts, PowerPoint slides, etc.)
What are students doing now?
College Libraries and Student Culture by Publication Date: 2012How do college students really conduct research for classroom assignments? Five large Illinois universities were awarded a Library Services and Technology Act Grant to try to answer that question.
- The Library Study at Fresno StateAn ethnographic study of undergraduate student life focusing on library services by Henry Delcore, James Mullooly, and Michael Scroggins.
- How College Graduates Solve Information Problems Once They Join the WorkplaceA 2012 Project Information Literacy Research Report by Alison Head which investigates what it is like to be a student in the digital age.
- Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of RochesterWhile “papers happen,” these librarians wanted to know how they happen. This is an ethnographic study of how undergraduate students write their research papers.
- The Legitimate Effort in Research Papers: Student Commitment versus Faculty Expectations.Presents information on a study which focused on the disparity between students and faculty expectations in doing research.
- Why first-year college students select online research resources as their favoriteA study of over 500 U.S. college students in first–year writing classes asking why they select certain online research resources as their favorite, offering a more complex picture of student motivation than popular accounts of these students as disinterested, lazy, and ignorant.
- Credibility judgment and verification behavior of college students concerning WikipediaThis study considers credibility judgments in the genre of Wikipedia.
- Pew Research Center's Millennial Generation ReportPew Research Center reports and data on the Millennial generation, those born after 1980 and the first generation to come of age in the new millennium, including information about their behavior, attitudes, and influences.
Resources
Students as Digital Pioneers and Partners
- Developing digital championsSeeking partnerships for change, how one college used local peer champions" as a highly effective way of taking forward digital literacy issues.
- Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher educationA 2014 study sponsored by The Higher Education Academy.
- Toolkit for developing successful student-staff partnershipsSponsored by JISC, this guide offers curriculum design tools for setting up, sustaining, and embedding successful student-staff partnerships.
- Change Agents' NetworkA network of staff and students working in partnership to support curriculum enhancement and innovation, including multiple projects to implement digital literacy programs.
Technology and Higher Ed
- Horizon ReportThe annual Horizon Report is a collaborative effort between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) and the New Media Consortium (NMC). The report identifies and describes important developments in technology likely to have a large impact over the coming five years in education around the world, focusing on trends, challenges, and developments in higher education.
- Project Information Literacy (PIL)Project Information Literacy (PIL) is "a national and ongoing series of research studies that investigates what it is like being a college student in the digital age." They collect data about how students find and use information -- their needs, strategies, practices, and workarounds -- for course work and solving information problems that arise in their everyday lives.