Digital Information Literacy Toolkit

Regardless of whether a course is validating for the Digital Information Literacy Special Emphasis, there are ways to enrich almost any course so that students (and instructors) are aware of the digital angle to the subject and its presentation.

Most of us hope that courses at UND awaken students' curiosity, inspire them to continue to engage with the subject after the course is over, and communicate the great things they've learned--inside and outside the classroom--to their fellow students, families, and everyone else they encounter.

This whole process, in this day and age, involves digital information.  What we can do in the classroom, as instructors and librarians, is help students be aware of their digital information environment, how this world that seems so ordinary and second nature (or first nature?) has hidden contours, pitfalls, and opportunities for satisfying their own curiosity and kindling it in others.

• People are consumers of information.  How is information created?  What's the best way to find it?  How do you tell what's good or bad for your needs?
• People are creators of information.  How do people communicate information--as scholars, citizens, commenters?  What are the effective rhetorical tools for communicating digitally?
• Digital and analog are different.  What effect does the medium have on the message?  And not just between digital and analog, but between different "channels" within those, like comparing blogs and videos.
• Students leave the classroom.  Students were consumers and producers of digital content long before they came to college and will be so long after they graduate.  What tools and techniques can we introduce while they're here so they can be effective, ethical, and enriched digital citizens?

The table below shows an example of a digital information literacy course outcome alignment. 

Using a Course Alignment Map Template from TTaDA's Best Practices in Online Teaching Blackboard Ultra course.

Thanks to Jeffrey Anvari-Clark* for sharing his materials and thoughts, as excerpted here. In practice when mapping across an entire course, there is opportunity to mix and match several course outcomes and module outcomes and then assignments to address those outcomes. "This way, a given course outcome can be met multiple times, and different assignments will meet module outcomes (and thereby course outcomes) flexibly throughout the semester, rather than explicitly during that one module period. It can facilitate a more circuitous or holistic approach to an otherwise linear process..."

*Summer 2024 Digital Information Literacy Workshop participant.

Many "traditional" projects can have a greater digital information literacy flavor without too much surgery.  The following are some examples that may be appropriate:

A group PowerPoint presentation could become a YouTube video.  This moves the audience from the classroom to the outside world, and helps students understand the process of creating the content they consume every day.  There are tools on campus, including in the Library, to help students create high-quality videos, but even just creating a script, choosing footage to use, working through how to decide what to include and what to exclude, can be highly instructive.

Understanding how the medium affects the message can be approached by taking a reading summary or annotated bibliography and using it as a chance to let students discover how an article, video, Wikipedia page, AI prompt, etc are different and how they may be appropriate--or not--for different purposes.  This kind of comparative digital source paper helps students understand why, say, a peer reviewed article has a crucial place in the academic conversation but may not be vital for background reading.

Understanding that students aren't students forever, and won't have access to everything the Library and UIT have to offer can awaken an instructor to a lot of possibilities.  What tools--like Zotero, or simple video creation, or just responsible commenting--can be used after graduation?  How can they be integrated into assignments so students learn how to use them responsibly and effectively?  In major-sequence courses, think about what resources students will use once they're "in industry," and emphasize this is something they can expect to use after graduation.

Visit the Instructional Resources Page for more.

Essential Studies Course Validation website link