Implementations, Requirements & Challenges
The survey was designed to learn if and how digital literacy is being implemented programmatically and to discover WPAs' motivations for or against doing so. A majority of the survey respondents, 64%, indicated that digital literacy is formally encouraged in their programs (n=67).
The respondents also indicated that digital literacy is at least moderately important to the overall mission of these writing programs. As shown in Figure 1, respondents were asked to select how important digital literacy is to the overall mission of their program using a scale from 1-11, with 1 representing unimportant and 11 indicating very important. While there was a range in level of importance, only 19 respondents (27%) chose any number below moderately important. The highest number of respondents (20%) chose 8—in between moderately and very important—and the average rating came out to 6.75%, just above moderately important.
Thus, digital literacy is being employed in many programs and maintains a significant level of importance in relationship to other curricular goals. |
Figure 1
|
However, the ways in which it is being enacted and interpreted vary significantly across programs. Most often, WPAs support digital literacy by offering workshops or other teacher-training initiatives related to digital literacy (mentioned in 41% of the responses). The other most common programmatic instantiation of digital literacy (30%) is through Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) (or sometimes program objectives or goals) that articulate digital literacy requirements. Most often, these objectives and outcomes are related to research skills (for example, “students should be able to navigate online databases”).
Figure 2
Click the buttons toward the top of the chart above to compare composing and analysis. Hover over each item in the graph to see actual percentages.
|
To learn more about programmatic requirements, I asked respondents if their program requires instructors to assign a digital composing assignment (provided examples included a blog, wiki, audio essay) and if instructors are required to teach students how to analyze digital texts. Overall, while digital literacy may be part of a program’s SLOs, the majority of the WPAs do not require that students analyze or produce digital compositions (52.2% for producing, 44.9% for analyzing), although 26.1% and 29% of the WPAs stated that they suggest that instructors have students analyze or produce digital texts, respectively.
As Figure 2 shows, more WPAs indicated that their programs require students in at least some of their courses to analyze (29%) than to actually produce or compose a digital text (18.8%). As one respondent put it, she wanted to make "a distinction between pressing our students to be critical readers of digital media and asking our students to produce digital media. We emphasize the former, and to that extent, digital literacy is very important to our program. The latter, however, is not important to our program." |
While a composing requirement was not common, the most frequently mentioned type of assignment was a "recast" or "remix" assignment in which students would turn prior written research into a multimodal and/or digital composition.
When WPAs were asked to explain their answer to whether or not digital literacy is employed at a curricular level, some respondents indicated that they felt digital literacy belonged in upper-level special topics courses but not in first-year writing courses.
When WPAs were asked to explain their answer to whether or not digital literacy is employed at a curricular level, some respondents indicated that they felt digital literacy belonged in upper-level special topics courses but not in first-year writing courses.
MotivationsOf course, a variety of factors and stakeholders’ opinions play into the actual practices of a writing program. A WPA may feel a certain way about digital literacy but not be able to enact it in practice. To address potential disjunctures between motivations/attitudes and actual practices, I asked the open-ended question (survey section 3 question 4), “What role should digital literacy play in the composition classroom?” This allowed the WPAs to describe their own opinions, including being able to express that digital literacy should play no role in the composition classroom, even if WPAs have had to integrate it due to pressures from others.
|
Figure 3 |
Of the 58 responses to this question, 47 (81%) were coded as positive, in the sense that these WPAs feel digital literacy does belong in the composition curriculum. Many used strong words such as “central,” “primary,” “essential,” “important,” and “integral” to describe the role of digital literacy. A few respondents explicitly noted that they wished digital literacy played a more significant role in their program. Only one respondent (1.7%) responded with what was coded as a negative response, and he indicated that digital literacy should play “no role” in the writing curriculum. (Unfortunately, the respondent did not explain further, so I was unable to determine the reason driving his response.) To learn more about the positive responses, visit the motivations page.
The remaining 10 responses were categorized as “undecided” or “unclear.” One respondent, for instance, said digital literacy’s role should depend on the goals of the program but did not did explain further. Others in this category indicated that they were undecided, citing concerns about fitting digital literacy into an already-packed curriculum or that a focus on digital literacy could “water down” the primary mission of “reading and writing academic prose.”
The overwhelmingly positive response here (81%), read against the data above, indicates that most WPAs find digital literacy to be important, but slightly less of them have made the move to implementing this on a programmatic scale. The most commonly cited challenges to programmatic requirements were as follows:
These challenges are not exactly new in the composition scholarship, but what is perhaps new is discovering that WPAs working across a variety of programs, with varied resources and budgets, still face challenges, such as access, that the field has been trying to tackle for some time, indicating that we may need to continue exploring ways to manage these issues.
To learn more about how I analyzed this data, visit the data analysis page.
The remaining 10 responses were categorized as “undecided” or “unclear.” One respondent, for instance, said digital literacy’s role should depend on the goals of the program but did not did explain further. Others in this category indicated that they were undecided, citing concerns about fitting digital literacy into an already-packed curriculum or that a focus on digital literacy could “water down” the primary mission of “reading and writing academic prose.”
The overwhelmingly positive response here (81%), read against the data above, indicates that most WPAs find digital literacy to be important, but slightly less of them have made the move to implementing this on a programmatic scale. The most commonly cited challenges to programmatic requirements were as follows:
- There is a need for more teacher technology training, and there is not enough time for this training.
- Faculty members lack interest.
- Programs do not have enough (or any) classrooms with computer access.
These challenges are not exactly new in the composition scholarship, but what is perhaps new is discovering that WPAs working across a variety of programs, with varied resources and budgets, still face challenges, such as access, that the field has been trying to tackle for some time, indicating that we may need to continue exploring ways to manage these issues.
To learn more about how I analyzed this data, visit the data analysis page.