Task 4
 Title: What are the key criteria for assessing Digital Literacy for a tertiary level student?

 

Before identifying the key criteria for assessing Digital literacy, the meaning of digital literacy in tertiary context needs to be defined. While there have been many attempts to define Digital Literacy, the rough consensus about this term is that “Digital Literacy is about ideas, not just key strokes” (Gilster, 1997).  The ideas need to be redefined in different context, technological development, and socio-economic progression in course of time. With the onset of ubiquitous access to digital contents, the cost of production, distribution and consumption of information is trivial. In today’s context, tertiary students most likely to have developed digital skills without having digital literacy (Griffin & Macgaw, 2012). That means the students will continue to consume, produce and distribute digital content without understanding the socio-economic consequences. They have learned the “keystrokes” but yet to master the ideas like critically evaluate the authenticity, copyright issues and the motives surrounding the production and distribution of any digital content. That is why it is very important to conduct an assessment of their level of digital literacy skills. This research is all about finding the key criteria for Digital Literacy assessments for Tertiary level student.

While there are different frameworks for setting the scope of digital literacy assessment, themost relevant one should address this topic by taking into consideration of 21st century skills (Silvernail et al., 2008) which require learners to have creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving capabilities (Saavedra & Opfer, 2012).  Certainly, digital literacy is so important for achieving 21st century skills that the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development has quoted the following: “Digital technologies now underpin effective participation across many aspects of everyday life and work” (Atchoarena et al., 2017).

We need to define the scope of digital literacy to facilitate the assessment of tertiary students in this area. The 2016 study by New Media Consortium reviewed the digital literacies landscape with consultation of 450 educators and broke down digital literacy into three different models: i. Universal Literacy, ii. Creative Literacy and iii. Literacy across disciplines (Alexander et al., 2016). Universal literacy covered the most fundamental skills to use digital tools such as office software, cloud and web content authoring applications. Creative literacy goes beyond the basic skills by including audio-video authoring and editing tools as well as knowledge about digital citizenship and copyright. The third component deals with cross disciplinary orientation of digital tools to enhance the learning process and cover different aspects of digital ecosystem in terms of their relevance in specific discipline.

The research by Siddiq et al. (Siddiq et al., 2016) has evaluated 44 assessment tools for primary and secondary school context and reported that there is a lack of assessment tools for tertiary level that measures 21st century skills like creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving. Following this research, UNESCO within its Digital Literacy Global Framework (DLGF), has published a comprehensive report that compared different Digital Literacy curriculum context and have added 14 additional tools for a wide multi-cultural context with two 2 tools specifically covering tertiary students. This report did not endorse any one particular tool to measure digital literacy, but provided a guideline for different countries to choose tools from a collection of tools like, Eurostat’s digital Skills Indicator (EU4Digital, 2015), EU’s DigComp Assessment (Riina et al., 2016) , or the open sourced PIX test (Vie et al., 2017).

On the other hand, there are already available certification frameworks that may help institutions and individuals to quickly assess their competency in digital literacy. For example, the IC3 digital literacycertification which has gone through a number of updates and the most recent one is Global standard six (IC3, 2020). The certification has three levels covering the seven key areas with difficulty levels adjusted based on the levels: 1. Technology Basics, 2. Digital Citizenship, 3. Information Management, 4. Content Creation, 5. Communication, 6. Collaboration, 7. Safety and Security. For tertiary students, the level 3 certification looks a like a good match as it covers aspects device security, collaboration tools, creating digital media for specific audiences, evaluation of digital media sources and multiple search results. This kind of off the self-assessment tools might be helpful for corporations or individuals who do not have the time and motivation for devising their own digital literacy assessment tools, but this might not be a solution for tertiary institutions who want to adopt their own tools for meeting the challenges.

In conclusion, identifying the key criteria for assessing digital literacy in tertiary level involves choosing a framework for digital literacy competencies and then identifying the appropriate assessment tools that can reliably and correctly measure learners’ capabilities to meet 21st century skill sets. 

 

 

 

References:

 

Alexander, B., Adams Becker, S., & Cummins, M. (2016). Digital literacy: An NMC horizon project strategic brief. volume 3.3. In ERIC.ed.gov. New Media Consortium. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED593900

Atchoarena, D., Selwyn, N., Chakroun, B., Miao, F., West, M., & Coligny, C. de. (2017). Working group on education: Digital skills for life and work. UNESCO. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0025/002590/259013e.pdf

EU4Digital. (2015). Digital skills indicator -derived from Eurostat survey on ICT usage by individuals. https://eufordigital.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Digital-Skills-Indicator-survey-on-ICT-usage-by-Individuals_Methodological.pdf

Griffin, P., & Macgaw, B. (2012). Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills. Springer

IC3. (2020). Introducing  IC3  digital literacy certification global standard six. Pearsonvue.com. https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/fc/ic3/gs6/overview

Riina, V., Yves, P., Stephanie, Carrec. G., & Godelieve, V. D. B. (2016). DigComp 2.0: The digital competence framework for citizens. update phase 1: The conceptual reference model. In EU Science Hub - European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientific-and-technical-research-reports/digcomp-20-digital-competence-framework-citizens-update-phase-1-conceptual-reference-model

Saavedra, A. R., & Opfer, V. D. (2012). Learning 21st-Century Skills Requires 21st-Century Teaching. Phi Delta Kappan, 94(2), 8–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171209400203

Siddiq, F., Hatlevik, O. E., Olsen, R. V., Throndsen, I., & Scherer, R. (2016). Taking a future perspective by learning from the past – A systematic review of assessment instruments that aim to measure primary and secondary school students’ ICT literacy. Educational Research Review, 19(1), 58–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2016.05.002 

Silvernail, D., Small, D., Walker, L., Wilson, R., & Wintle, S. (2008). Using technology in helping students achieve 21 st century skills: A pilot study. https://usm.maine.edu/sites/default/files/cepare/Using_Technology_in_Helping_Students_Achieve_21st_Century_Skills_Pilot_Study.pdf

Vie, J.-J., Marteau, B., Denos, N., & Tort, F. (2017). PIX: A platform for certification of digital competencies. https://jill-jenn.net/_static/works/pix-a-platform-for-certification-of-digital-competencies.pdf

 4.4   

The following screen shot shows my online bibliography available at https://www.mybib.com/j/SpiffyFilthyIbex

 


Figure 18 Screen shot of mybib library online


I have also use Zotero with browser plugin:

 


Figure 19 Screen shot of zotero bibliography


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

  Task 4 Assess your learning as a reflective digital online learner I have been using the Internet on regular basis since 1995 and throughout this long time I have witnessed the transformation of the Internet from a computer network for sharing information to one of the biggest business and collaboration platforms. However, I have never been exposed to a formal approach to learn about the different skill sets for digital literacy. Evaluation: Good: Although I was familiar with most of topics like, digital citizenship, online identity and societal issues on the internet, I have been able to enhance my understanding at a deeper level through watching some of the excellent videos and reference papers. For example, the video titled “ Rethinking Learning: the 21 st century Learner ” provides important insights about the gamers and their preference to get measured while they are learning, was eye opening to me. I have a different perspective about why some of my learners are quite ...
Read more
Image
 The Joy of Teaching  The joy of watching a struggling learner becoming  a confident, self-motivated and technically skilled individual is absolutely rewarding to me. That is indeed the ultimate goal of my teaching activities. I want to make sure that the learners feel a personal connection with the subject area, continue their learning journey even when the course finishes, and afterwards apply the skills to solve problems in different domain and inspire other learners to this subject. Certainly, the use of digital tools and content in my teaching play an important role in making my academic vision into action. Before getting the students on board for a life long learning journey with me, I want to make sure that the learners do realize that a deep sense of care is rooted in my teaching. I want to see each learner experience a change within their cognitive selves after taking my course. One of the instruments that I have found very effecting in bringing this change, is t...
Read more
  Task 2:  Review a digital online tool, including considerations for security, privacy and learning in a digital age 2.1 Review of Google Sites as a platform Class portal ------------------------------------------------------------ 2.1 Purpose: the intended purpose for Google Sites (which is a Software as a Service platform from Google Inc) is to host the class portal. 2.2 Example: Here is one of the class portal that I hosted on google sites in 2010:              https://sites.google.com/site/cseduos/ 2.4 [Disclaimer: I do not have any association with Google LLC. I am just reviewing Google sites as I have  used it extensively in my teaching since 2008. ] 2.5 Google sites (https://sites.google.com/) is a software as a service provided by Google LLC ( organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, and operating under the laws of the USA) for hosting and managing web portals. It is fre...
Read more