I began this webtext in search of a concrete definition of digital literacy that can be practically applied in the college writing courses I teach. The History of Literacy Instruction section argues that incorporating digital tools to teach multiliteracies is a fairly well-established way to teach literacy as both flexible and contextualized, thus recognizing that literacy is a social practice. The Problem of Tool Use explores the complicated relationship between literacy and tools, arguing for simultaneous instruction in the functional/operational and rhetorical/conceptual aspects of literacy. To translate this abstract definition of digital literacy into something concrete, the next step is to define the social context of digital literacy for an average1 American college student and then identify key characteristics that can be designed for and measured in college writing courses.
Cathy Davidson (2014a) offers a helpful, albeit broad, characterization of that social context. She explains that humanity has experienced four great information ages that all began with the invention of literacy tools, and each information age has drastically changed the notions of power and authority that define the social order: writing, moveable type, mass printing, and the internet. Since the internet became public in 1993, we’ve shifted into the Internet Age; as such, we can begin to characterize digital literacy by looking at the differences in the social order brought by the internet.
Many scholars in computers and composition have created much more narrow characterizations of digital literacy in the internet age through qualitative research. Most notable are Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe’s case studies describing the differences in literacy learning during the 1990s and the 2000s (Hawisher et al., 2004; DeVoss et al., 2004), which are particularly interesting when read alongside Brandt’s (1995) case studies of the differences in literacy learning in the 1930s and the 1960s, as well as Davis’ (2011) portrait of a college student in 2010. Additionally, as discussed previously, other computers and composition scholars have written extensively about applications of digital literacy in the college composition classroom, most often focusing on student-produced multimodal compositions.
In the following sections, I build upon this existing computers and composition research, as well as scholarship from the fields of literacy studies and digital media and learning, to identify three characteristics that can guide the design and assessment of digital literacy as a learning outcome in college writing courses: (1) multimodal composition, (2) information, and (3) collaboration. These three characteristics not only consistently permeate the literature, but they are also uniquely relevant to the Internet Age. The internet enables mass production and, more importantly, distribution of multimodal compositions; information literacy in the internet age is more about critical evaluation than it is about accessibility; and online collaboration allows for crowd-sourced authority and encourages participation and production rather than passive consumption.
1 For the purposes of this webtext, I define the "average" as English-speaking Americans who have reliable access to the internet and to digital devices. I recognize that this description is necessarily not representative of all Americans, nor is it generalizable to other cultures. It is my hope that future research will investigate the ways the diverse subcultures of American society and other nationalities deviate from my characterization of our current social context; such work is critical to literacy research because it illuminates the power structures inherent in definitions of social values like digital literacy. However, in order to define digital literacy, it is necessary to specify a social context, and it seems prudent to begin defining the learning outcome of digital literacy in terms of the "average" American college student. [back to text]
For more information about literacy instruction, see History of Literacy Instruction and Teaching Digital Literacy. For more information about the relationship between literacy and digital tools, see The Problem of Tool Use.
Created by Mary K. Stewart (2014)