Digital Literacy Concepts and Definitions: Implications for Educational Assessment and Practice (original) (raw)

Assessing Digital Literacy: A Case Study

This paper reports on assessing digital literacy at an international school. An assessment instrument was constructed and applied to help identify the digital literacy of a group of eleven to twelve year old students. A digital literacy framework previously developed was applied using an action research process. Evidence of visible learning created by students was collected. The role of the teacher in supporting and facilitating the process was identified as a significant component, as was peer teaching.

Defining digital literacy

2010

The debate about digital technology and education has moved beyond the question of basic access. Attention is now focusing on the issue of what young people need to know about technology–that is, the forms of competence and understanding they need if they are going to use technology effectively and critically. The debate now is about 'digital literacy'. And yet digital literacy is often narrowly defined, as merely a matter of technical skill.

Digital Literacy: Definition, Theoretical Framework, and Competencies

COERC 2012, 2012

This paper offers an overview of existing definitions and theoretical frameworks for digital literacy. The researcher makes recommendations for an agreed upon definition and theoretical framework and discusses implications for a relationship between digital and visual literacy skills. For some time now, new perspectives on literacy, and the learning processes through which literacy is acquired, has been emerging (Herbert, 1991). While there is agreement that a new set of 21st-century skills involving technologies are needed for literacy, there is little consensus about precisely what knowledge and abilities are necessary for people to be digitally literate (Ba, Tally, & Tsikalas, 2002). To obtain a consensus, there must be an agreed upon definition for digital literacy and an identification of its particular competencies. For this to happen, two initial steps must be taken: (a) Begin the development of an instrument designed to identify the major dimensions of digital literacy, and (b) conduct an initial validation study of this instrument. This paper offers an overview of existing digital literacy definitions, frameworks, and competencies; makes recommendations for the refinement of a digital literacy model that includes visual literacy as a core skill; and discusses implications for a relationship between digital and visual literacy skills. Purpose As technology pervades every aspect of our lives, the ability to navigate and successfully accomplish tasks through technology grows. Whether you are in primary, secondary, or postsecondary school, and whether you are employed or entering retirement, it is now necessary to have some technology skills both to communicate with the outside world and to perform administrative, creative, and educative tasks. The continued increase and use of online media content for information gathering also challenges the learner to organize and compose information in a nonlinear fashion while often integrating visual media to synthesize that information. This skill set is commonly called digital literacy. Digital literacy refers to the assortment of cognitive-thinking strategies that consumers of digital information utilize (Eshet, 2004). Other terms used alongside or sometimes synonymously with digital literacy include: 21 st-century literacies, Internet literacies, multiliteracies, information literacy, information communication technologies (ICT) literacies, computer literacy, and online reading comprehension (ORC). Each term has particular definitions, but common assumptions bring them together under the same theoretical umbrella of new literacies. Leu, Zawilinski, Castek, Banerjee, Housand, Liu, and O'Neil (2007) conclude that most new literacies, including digital literacy, share four assumptions: (a) new literacies include the new skills, strategies, dispositions, and social practices that are required by new technologies for information and communication; (b) new literacies are central to full participation in a global community; (c) new literacies regularly change as their defining technologies change; and (d) new literacies are multifaceted and our understanding of them benefits from multiple points of view. Leu, O'Byrne, Zawilinski, McVerry, and Everett-Cacopardo (2009) describe how new

Digital literacy: An analysis of the contemporary paradigms

… . org/IJSTER (c). Int. …, 2010

Digital (computer) literacy is the new title for 'educated'. Both teachers and students have no option but to acquire a level of computer-literacy to catch up with the growing digital societies. Governments and higher education institutions (mHEIs) are making all out ...

A Review of Digital Literacy Assessment Instruments

Instructional Designers rely on tools that bear useful measurements for assessing learner characteristics in front-end analysis settings. In the digital network environment, we find learners possess a wide variety of skills, experiences, interests, attitudes, and comprehension about digital tools, information systems, and content. Instructional Designers, as well as learning institutions, may desire information on normative or criterion based assessment instruments to measure learner competence in the areas of Digital Literacy prior to engaging them in instruction.

Developing Digital Literacy for Teaching and Learning

Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education, 2022

Digital literacy is a critical competence for empowering citizenship in a digital world. It has become a key element in teaching and learning across the different educational stages that has been addressed since the last decade of the twentieth century within the field of open, distance, and digital education. The literature so far has not agreed on a common definition, but multiple international, national, and even local, frameworks exist to foster digital literacy and to evaluate and certificate it, especially with a focus on educators and students in different educational levels, but also with the citizen perspective. These frameworks are

Digitally Literate: Framework for the Development of Digital Literacy

The development of information and communication technology is placing the need for the acquisition of digital skills at the same level of the acquisition of conventional reading and calculus competences. The importance of being digitally literate increases as society becomes progressively more digital. This paper explores the concept of digital literacy and it intends to develop a framework for the development and dissemination of digital literacy as well as to propose a survey that will throughout time provide an assessment of individuals' digital skills. It begins by examining the various definitions of digital literacies and proceeds then to a discussion of what is being done to promote them and what can be done to improve their dissemination. The framework this paper proposes is composed of three core elements: access to technology, education and culture. The survey it recommends is an European Union-wide instrument of digital literacy measurement.

Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends

This special issue of the journal collects the proposals of the call for papers focusing on "Digital Literacy and Digital Competence: Facts, Problems, Needs & Trends", an issue solicited by many sides and especially by the members of the editorial board, to draw the panorama emerging from most recent studies on these topics and to define new strategies for the future. According to the need of a balance for the activity of the journal and to answer to the will of those who think that numbers underline more subtle and complex reasons for the events under observation, it must be noted that this issue of the journal has two special features: § it comes ten years after a paper presented in 2004, at the yearly conference of the Italian Association for Didactics Research (SIRD), where the need for new educational methods and practices was presented and discussed as a pedagogical emergency, due to the problem of the digital divide in Western countries and its connection with digital literacy and new emerging features for citizenship (Cartelli, 2005), § five years ago, started the publication of this journal and in its first issue, among other questions and problems, the concept of digital competence and its connection with digital literacy, computing fluency and informatics skills were analyzed (Cartelli et al., 2010). Now the reader could question whether or not the focus of this issue is still actual and has relevance for research and everyday life, or it is more useful a balance of the events and results obtained in these years to let people autonomously decide what instruments and practices to adopt in their work. Undoubtedly, the research on digital literacy and digital competence, has had great impulse since the first years of new millennium, but people could not expect that today it is getting more and more hot and it is acquiring an increasingly relevance in all areas of daily life, included education. There are many reasons for the above declaration, and in what follows they will be discussed in a greater detail, but it is important to note here that the main consequence of the consciousness of the actuality of the research in digital literacy and digital competence implies the re-definition of the journal perspective and the involvement of new actors; the editors of the journal, promoters of the call for papers collecting the contributions published here, are in fact persuaded that this is the main and probably the only way for the IJDLDC to reaffirm itself as the landmark for researchers and professionals dealing with contemporary digital life and education.