1st Edition
Integrating Digital Literacy in the Disciplines
Digital literacy has become the vital competency that students need to master before graduating. This book provides rich examples of how to integrate it in disciplinary courses.While many institutions are developing introductory courses to impart universal literacy (skills students need to know) and creative literacy (skills for creating new content), discipline-specific skills (skills needed to succeed within a specific discipline) are a vital extension to their learning and ability to apply digital literacy in different contexts. This book provides examples of how to integrate digital literacy across a wide variety of courses spanning many domains.Rather than a wholly new core institutional outcome, digital literacy adds to the development of critical thinking, communication, problem-solving, and teamwork skills by building students’ capacities to assess online information so they can ethically share, communicate, or repurpose it through the appropriate use of available digital technologies. In short, it provides the vital digital dimension to their learning and the literacy skills which will be in increasing demand in their future lives.Following introductory chapters providing context and a theoretical framework, the contributing authors from different disciplines share the digital competencies and skills needed within their fields, the strategies they use to teach them, and insights about the choices they made. What shines through the examples is that, regardless of the specificity of the disciplinary examples, they offer all readers a commonality of approach and a trove of ideas that can be adapted to other contexts.This book constitutes a practical introduction for faculty interested in including opportunities to apply digital literacy to discipline-specific content. The book will benefit faculty developers and instructional designers who work with disciplinary faculty to integrate digital literacy. The book underscores the importance of preparing students at the course level to create, and be assessed on, digital content as fields are modernizing and delivery formats of assignments are evolving.Domains covered include digital literacy in teacher education, writing, musicology, indigenous literary studies, communications, journalism, business information technology, strategic management, chemistry, biology, health sciences, optometry, school librarianship, and law.The book demonstrates a range of approaches that can used to teach digital literacy skills in the classroom, including:·Progressing from digital literacy to digital fluency ·Increasing digital literacy by creating digital content · Assessment of digital literacy ·Identifying ethical considerations with digital literacy ·Sharing digital content outside of the classroom ·Identifying misinformation in digital communications ·Digitizing instructional practices, like lab notes and essays ·Reframing digital literacy from assumption to opportunity ·Preparing students to teach digital literacy to others ·Collaborating with other departments on campus to support digital literacy instruction ·Incorporating media into digital literacy (digital media literacy) ·Using digital storytelling and infographics to teach content knowledge] ·Weaving digital literacy throughout the curriculum of a program, and with increasing depth
Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Digital Literacy in the Academy—Jenna Kammer, Todd Cherner, and Lauren Hays Part One. Education 2. Repositioning Digital Literacy in Educator Preparation Programs. A Digital Disciplinary Approach for Teaching Methods Instructors—Todd Cherner 3. Developing Digital Literacy in the Arts for Pre-Service Teachers—Judith Dinham 4. Enhancing Digital Literacy Through Scholarly Digital Storytelling—Kelly Schrum 5. Teaching Digital Literacies to Challenge Narratives of Compliance and Defiance—Leah Panther Part Two. Humanities 6. Digital Literacies for English. Laying a Foundation in First-Year Writing—Jessie L. Moore and Greg Hlavaty 7. Open and Closed. Open Education Projects, Indigenous Studies, and Teaching Undergraduate Students About the Ethics of Information Access—Jennifer Hardwick 8. Using Public Musicology to Teach Digital Literacy in Music History Classes—Reba Wissner Part Three. Communication and Media Studies 9. Digital Literacy From the Perspective of Journalism Education. Digital Media Literacy—Simge Süllü Durul and Tezcan Özkan Kutlu 10. Digital Literacy in Design, Media, and Communications Disciplines. Fluency Is the New Literacy—Phillip Motley and Derek Lackaff Part Four. Business 11. Digital Storytelling in Postgraduate Strategic Management Courses—Mo Kader 12. Extending the Notion of Digital Literacy in Business IT Courses. Thoughts on Process and Meta-literacy—Jeffrey Mok and Damien Joseph Part Five. Science 13. An Infographics Assignment as a Vehicle to Promote Digital Literacy in a Non-majors Introductory Biology Course—Isabelle Barette-Ng and Patti Dyjur 14. Digital Literacy in Chemistry—Jordan Mantha Part Six. Health Sciences 15. The Importance of Digital Literacy Education in a Cancer Genomics MOOC—Louise Blakemore, Camille Huser, Aileen Linn, and Leah Marks 16. Integrating Digital Literacy Into Optometric Clinical Reasoning—Heather Edmonds, Sandra Mohr, and Aurora Denia Part Seven. Professional Degrees 17. Digital Literacy in School Librarianship—Rene Burress 18. Taking the Law Into Their Own Hands. Innovative Digital Video Assessment in a Law Degree—Eleneth Woolley, David Yammouni, and Gerry Rayner About the Editors and Contributors Index
Biography
Lauren Hays, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Central Missouri where she enjoys teaching and developing new learning opportunities. Prior to her position at UCM, she was an Instructional and Research Librarian. Her areas of research interest include digital literacy, educational technology, and information literacy.
Jenna Kammer, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in Library and Information Services at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri. She teaches Organizing Information, Action Research and Technology in Libraries. Prior to her role at UCM, she was an instructional designer and a librarian in public and academic libraries. She conducts research in the areas of information culture, policy, and ethics.
“Teaching…non-traditional literacies led me to an important realization: I had been assuming—incorrectly—for years that all of my students possessed the more traditional literacies used in typical writing assignments. Why hadn’t I been scaffolding those assignments as intentionally to teach those skills and mindsets? I don’t have a good answer to that, but this is one reason it’s critical that educators teach new digital literacies in their disciplines. Doing so gives us a much greater appreciation of the importance of teaching all kinds of literacies to our students, to prepare them for complex and challenging futures.
This work isn’t easy, as it requires us to challenge ourselves to learn and teach new literacies that aren’t always familiar to us. But it’s important work, and that’s why I’m excited to see this volume. I hope it will inspire and equip more educators to add [such] assignments and activities to their courses, ones that will empower students to navigate their increasingly complex digital lives.”
From the Foreword, Derek Bruff
"Being a digital native does not equate to digital literacy. It is imperative that we teach our students to be digitally literate, if not fluent, as digital literacy is one of the most important issues our society currently faces. Integrating Digital Literacy in the Disciplines is a goldmine of information. Written by colleagues from throughout the world, this comprehensive book integrates habits of mind with multiple frameworks of digital literacy to deliver descriptions of programs, initiatives, classroom assignments, student projects, research, teaching strategies, frameworks, digital materials, course design, and more. Most impressive is the consistent focus on student learning."
Todd Zakrajsek, Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine
UNC-Chapel Hill
"Integrating Digital Literacy in the Disciplines is a must have guide for academic librarians, academic developers, and instructors interested in the topic. Novices will be introduced to the breadth of the term digital literacy while experts will find novel applications situated in disciplines. Hays and Kammer have done a fantastic job of compiling a variety of voices on an increasingly critical skill set."
Shannon Sipes
Director/Lead Instructional Consultant, Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) Program Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, Indiana University Bloomington
“While the book lends itself to skipping around, in reading all chapters it is edifying to see the hard-earned “classroom wisdom” that recurs across disciplinary lines. For example, most authors observe that “digital natives” are neither reliably competent nor confident with the digital tools used in their courses, and therefore they recommend building in plenty of time to teach students how to use the learning management system, etc. In many cases, a librarian or a more knowledgeable student from outside the class was contacted to support students in their efforts to learn new digital tools.
Authenticity is another major theme. The capacity for case studies to engage students is attested to by multiple authors; even better if they are supplemented with photo and video to create an immersive “digital story.” Students in the courses typically work on their own digital stories, collaborating as they would in a professional environment, and products are based on authentic disciplinary/professional texts.
As students are learning how to communicate in new ways (and/or to new audiences), the authors speak to the importance of consistent feedback.
The digital world of today consists of unfathomable amounts of information shared with a group of people no less diverse than the human race itself. As educators, we have the seemingly impossible task of trying to understand this world so that we can predict what literacies will be relevant in the world of twenty years from now (and beyond). The technology our students will use is constantly changing, and the audiences for their digital stories add new facets daily. Therefore, the goals of instruction are constantly changing.
Integrating Digital Literacy in the Disciplines contains valuable wisdom from those who are fighting the good fight to prepare students for the future. The 18 chapters in this volume offer accounts of courses and programs that have clearly been the subject of deep thought and continuous revision on the part of the authors. Readers will find themselves frequently feeling the relief and gratitude that comes with the realization that someone else’s work has spared you countless mistakes and many long hours of frustration.”
Teachers College Record
