Digital Information Literacy
The Information Society needs a citizenry capable of accessing, creating, evaluating, organizing, interpreting, and disseminating information in increasingly digital formats: these transferrable and applied skills are necessary for success in the current and emerging workforce—and also necessary for active, thoughtful, and ethical participation in contemporary democratic society.
Requirements
To this end, the Essential Studies Program requires students to take a class with a special emphasis in “Digital Information Literacy.” The design of these courses needs to be informed by several key Information Literacy concepts, as articulated by the Association of College and Research Libraries:
- Authority is Constructed and Contextual
- Information Creation as a Process
- Information Has Value
- Research as Inquiry
- Scholarship as Conversation
- Searching as Strategic Exploration.
At the same time, such classes will teach students specialized tools and practices for finding, evaluating, and using information—in a variety of digital formats or mediums—effectively, efficiently, safely, and ethically.
In addition, these classes should empower students to actively participate in information environments. Digital citizens need transferable, foundational skills that prepare us to work with and evaluate new technologies—like artificial intelligence—and to be ready for emerging and future technologies. To become digital citizens, students need opportunities to be active learners who practice the rhetorical skills that come with communicating, creating, and distributing their own research; they need to practice the metacognition that helps learners reflect on their own cognitive, ethical, and emotional growth in digital spaces; they need opportunities to participate in interactive environments as critical thinkers; they need responsible, epistemic strategies for evaluating the information and misinformation that we encounter, asking themselves how we know what we know; they need to become critical information consumers that can collect, interpret, and apply a range of data and information.
Classes in “Digital Information Literacy” will, therefore, strengthen student agency as they encourage the dispositions that learners need to participate actively and thoughtfully in digital information environments.