My reflections on Digital Literacy

We started off the course on Digital Literacy by learning about what Information Literacy. I think all of us do know what IL is about, but mostly we don’t spend much time thinking about what the exact standards are.
Information literacy is a set of abilities encompassing the ability to do the following:
• Determine the extent of information needed
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
• Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
• Understand the economic, legal and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally

(Association of College and Research Libraries – ACRL Information Literacy competency standards for Higher Education)

How can we develop students who are information literate and grow them into self-directed life-long learners? Firstly, educators need to build learning environments where students take greater responsibility for their own learning. Students should be given ample opportunities to find things out for themselves – to solve problems, to find evidence from multiple sources, to make inquiries. To do so, they will need skills in information literacy. We need to frame our research projects and how we assess those projects, such that we build in outcomes which help students to attain information literacy skills. For example, if we want students to be able to gather information from a variety of formats (e.g. books, electronic database, websites, videos, podcasts, etc), or if we want students to be able to evaluate information and its sources critically, or learn how to acknowledge the use of information sources, then all these should be clearly articulated in the project requirements. The marking rubrics for projects may need to be tweaked to include assessment components which grade students not just on the quality of their research and analysis, but also on attaining IL outcomes.