Keywords
digital literacy; collaboration; academic library; optometry
Description
Digital literacy is increasingly seen as an important skill for 21st century university students. Alongside this, notions of ‘digital natives’ who intuitively or implicitly understand digital literacy persist, despite evidence to the contrary.
In order to better understand how digital literacy is expressed in course curriculum, and therefore provide more effective support to students, Deakin University Library worked with academic staff in the University’s School of Medicine to uncover where digital literacy was assessed across the span of a Master of Optometry degree. This process also revealed to what extent the underpinning digital literacy skills and knowledge needed to complete the assessments were explicitly taught versus implicitly expected to be pre-existing, or to be able to be developed without undue burden.
From this process an optometry digital literacy toolkit was developed by the Library. The toolkit contained resources aimed at supporting students’ development of the skills needed to complete the assessments. The toolkit is unique in that it addresses both the assessable items students are required to produce but also the skills and tools students need to have in order to produce them. Mapping the course against an accepted definition of digital literacy also gave a clearer understanding of the presence of digital literacy-focused assessments across the life of the course. This may have implications for course development.
This case study describes a Library-led collaboration with academic staff. It has particular focus on detailing a process of mapping a curriculum against a definition of digital literacy and the development of a complementary toolkit. These processes are likely readily transferable to other contexts.
Included in
Uncovering Digital Literacy and Supporting the Implicit: A Case Study of Library-Faculty Collaboration
Digital literacy is increasingly seen as an important skill for 21st century university students. Alongside this, notions of ‘digital natives’ who intuitively or implicitly understand digital literacy persist, despite evidence to the contrary.
In order to better understand how digital literacy is expressed in course curriculum, and therefore provide more effective support to students, Deakin University Library worked with academic staff in the University’s School of Medicine to uncover where digital literacy was assessed across the span of a Master of Optometry degree. This process also revealed to what extent the underpinning digital literacy skills and knowledge needed to complete the assessments were explicitly taught versus implicitly expected to be pre-existing, or to be able to be developed without undue burden.
From this process an optometry digital literacy toolkit was developed by the Library. The toolkit contained resources aimed at supporting students’ development of the skills needed to complete the assessments. The toolkit is unique in that it addresses both the assessable items students are required to produce but also the skills and tools students need to have in order to produce them. Mapping the course against an accepted definition of digital literacy also gave a clearer understanding of the presence of digital literacy-focused assessments across the life of the course. This may have implications for course development.
This case study describes a Library-led collaboration with academic staff. It has particular focus on detailing a process of mapping a curriculum against a definition of digital literacy and the development of a complementary toolkit. These processes are likely readily transferable to other contexts.