Digital Literacy in Higher Education (original) (raw)
Myths in Education, Learning and Teaching
This paper describes the processes of development of an online educational tool to facilitate equity and access for the diversity of students entering the largely digital context that is higher education today. The Associate Deans (Learning and Teaching) across the five faculties at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) responded to the issue of student diversity by developing a diagnostic and reflective tool (DART) to assist commencing students in developing their digital literacies according to their individual learning needs. DART was designed to enable and support online (digital) learning for the heterogeneous cohort of students studying at USQ, a regional Australian university. Initially, a range of theoretical perspectives were consulted to determine the knowledge, skills, and aptitudes that constitute digital literacy, including Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives. Secondly, from this review, a framework was constructed to map all relevant dimensions of digital literacy, dimensions which encompassed issues related not only to technical experiences but also to students' prior learning experiences. This stage also involved liaising with academic staff and other student support staff to further identify the threshold digital literacies required by first year students. Thirdly, two large-scale student surveys of students' digital literacies and prior experiences in engaging with digital learning environments were conducted. These evaluation cycles informed the ongoing development and refinement of DART. The current paper reports on initial findings from these surveys and discusses implications for the future implementation of DART in the University. achieve successful learning outcomes in their chosen program of study. At USQ, a medium sized regional university in Australia, the focus on digital literacies and digital learning is a priority. USQ has a strong history in correspondence and distance education. Building upon this brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk
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