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3 Approaches for Digital Literacy Integration
Integrating digital literacy, digital creativity, and/or digital learning into the curriculum can take many forms: from podcasts to presentations, vlogs to video essays. The problem is that approaches to integration are as varied as the disciplines. “Where do I start?” “Are there some examples to help me know what I might ask students to do?” “When should I do a podcast instead of reading response?” “How do I even teach a podcast?” “What if I just want to create better instructional materials?”
As a basic orientation to how faculty might integrate digital literacy into the curriculum, a good place for them to start is by deciding which area to focus on: activities, assets, or assessments (i.e., assignments).
- Activities are in-class engagements or designed learning experiences that get students involved with course content and/or critically/creatively engaged with key ideas and issues, and do so through the use of particular digital technologies and practices. (e.g., Think-Pair-Make-Share; Challenge & Obstructions Activity below)
- Assets are instructor-produced deliverables that help guide students through course content or practices, illuminate course ideas, or simply set-up (or extend) in-class engagements.
- Assessments (or assignments) are invited opportunities for students to create a particular kind of output and for instructors to assess student learning and development. These assessments can range from low-stakes activities (e.g., SSS Vlogs) to capstone projects, but what matters is the learning outcomes being assessed.
A Quick Strategy for Each
Activity | Obstructed Challenge
Instructors set up a target goal (i.e., what they want students to do), offer a series of obstructions (e.g., 4-5 rules/guides/requirements), and dictate the specific type of output. Instructors do not provide a how-to with a particular technology, but rather set the output goals and constraints and allow students to work through the problem. As such, this activity works best if using user-friendly technologies (Adobe CC Express; Google Docs/Slides; Adobe Stock; etc.) and set goals students can reasonably complete in a short (in-class) time-frame: i.e., the idea is to present the challenge, provide a time limit and set of obstructions, and let students work (and/or in small teams) to figure out how to complete the challenge. What matters here is not the accuracy of the final product, but how the experiences and created outputs facilitate course discussion & engagement with core ideas of the challenge.
EXAMPLE
One example I use frequently is the Think-Pair-Make-Share activity (modified as needed for situation/context), but another I've attempted (in various versions) is a mobile-production, video-based engagement. The most recent attempt being this TikTok, Graffiti, & Rhetoric Challenge.
CHALLENGE | Working from an informed perspective (i.e., drawing from course readings and discussions), students must make the case for the rhetoricity of graffiti: Is graffiti rhetorical? Can it be? How so?
BUT... the challenge must be completed within/adhering to the following obstructions:
- Obstruction 1: Real-world Example – Students must use in-the-wild graffiti: i.e., graffiti found in and/or around their immediate location (e.g., writing on bathroom stalls, annotated/marked-up posters, etc.)
- Obstruction 2: Video Output – Arguments must be presented in video form (students may use any video editing/authoring platform, but target options include Adobe Rush for its mobile production and/or Adobe Express Video for ease of use)
- Obstruction 3: TikTok Style – All video outputs have to be 2 minutes or less and must employ a style/approach reflective of a popular TikTok video.
- Obstruction 4: Completed creations must be submitted on Canvas.
- Obstruction 5: Time-limit – Students only get 30 minutes to complete this task.
Assets | Pre & Post-Class Engagements
Pre- and Post-Class Feedback Loops are great ways to leverage digital media (especially audio and video) to set-up and/or extend learning engagements. In truth, these assets can range from instructional videos to PowerPoint slides, infographics to interactive PDFs, but their goal is to help enhance the learning experience for students. Pre-class engagements typically fall under the flipped classroom model, while post-class engagements are often responsive and situationally grounded.
While the static handout remains a staple in either of these approaches, the reality is that the ease of audio and video recording and production is expanding the possibilities. Plus the added ability to create choose-your-own-adventure type video experiences with tools like Playposit is drastically expanding the spectrum for what is possible.
EXAMPLE
The One-Minute Notecard is a fairly common practice where instructors have students take one minute at the end of class to identify questions, confusions, tensions, and anything about which they are still uncertain. Then using those cards as a guide, the instructor creates some form of Post-Class Feedback Loop. These loops can be written responses, sharing PPT slides with highlighted elements, annotated PDFs, infographics, etc. But one low-stakes (and embodied) approach is a quick, informal audio or video recording, where the instructor responds to a few key issues or questions identified by students and shares that out to the class.
Assessments | Platform Swap
One of the easiest ways to bring digital literacy and digital creativity into the classroom is by taking an existing assignment and simply asking students to complete that assignment in an alternative platform (i.e., shifting the primary modality and mediation). Instructors might take a mid-term quiz or a reflective writing assignment and instead ask students to create a video essay or create a reflective podcast (e.g., narrative audio recording). Others might have students collectively produce a magazine in Adobe InDesign or build a monument with embedded weblinks in Minecraft instead of yet another mid-term paper in Word. By changing the primary platform (i.e., the base component), instructors (a) open the productive elements of the course to an increased array of student capacities of expression, (b) invite students to think differently about the task and content, and (c) create space for students to engage with course content through new avenues.
- Helpful Tip: The OPTION. Instead of requiring students work in digital media formats, a way to ease in to space is by making the platform swap optional. This allows those interested to produce course work in alternative modalities while permitting those more traditionally inclined to go with that which they are most comfortable. It does, however, create a demand for different kinds of assessments for the same set of assignments.
Additional Resources
Adobe Creative Cloud Across the Curriculum: A Guide for Students and Teachers by Todd Taylor
- This open access ebook serves as a handbook or guide for using Adobe Creative Cloud technologies for educational purposes. It begins not with specific tools, but rather a simple question, "What do you want to create today?" and it uses the idea of what you are trying to create as the basis of its pedagogy.
Digital Literacy, Digital Creativity, Digital Pedagogy by Justin Hodgson
- This Express Page creation is workshop and webinar guide to integrating digital literacy into the curriculum. It divides its focus into three parts: basic orientations for bringing technology into the classroom, pragmatic approaches for doing so, and gestures toward practices for creating a digital culture.
Assignment Shifts (some ideas)
Essay to Scrolling Digital Essay (via Express Page) or designed magazine creation (See Tiffany Friedman's [UNC Chapel Hill] "Writing in the Sciences: Popular Science Article Using InDesign"
Essay/Research Project to Video (see Shauna Chung's [Clemson University] easy-to-follow Video Essay assignment guide)
- Video as investigative lens (journalism type stories)
- Video as documentary (informative essay in video)
- Video as creative illustration (performative; story based)
Critical inquiry/issues investigations to Podcast (using Zoom & Adobe Audition)
- Talking Head variety (multiple voices engaging in a conversation on X)
- Interview with an expert
- Crafting an audio narrative (bringing together existing information and media with interview media to tell a story)
Idea/Principle explorations/demonstrations
- Automate a SlideDeck that uses Adobe Stock and Powerpoint or Adobe CC Express Video to explain or demonstrate a key idea or course principle (record voice over)
- Create an animation (using Powtoon, Adobe Animate, etc.) that explains or demonstrates a key idea or course principle
Transforming critical engagement into designed experiences
(Static) Create an image-oriented navigable webtext (pairing Adobe Photoshop + Wix.com) that brings together multiple media and interactivity to create different kinds of experiences.
(Static) Create an interactive map (attaching different created media to geolocation triggers [Google Maps; ArcGIS]) that guides people through a digitally layered experience of space/place.
Student Examples
The following examples are a selection of projects published at JUMP+, the Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (jumpplus.net).
Pseudo Documentary
- Lauren Becker – How To Feed a Sorority
- Sarah Gould – A Closer Look into Physical Disabilities
Webtexts
- Erin Kamp - Mediums Matter: Dance As An Artistic Medium
- Columbia College (CHI) Students - Maximum Waste: A Food Mockumentary
Remixes
- Andrew Williams - Picture Perfect (Video)
- David Bistline - Sweet Interruption (Audio)
Image-Based Projects
- Hannah Charlton - The Shadow of Turning (Comic)
- Hannah Moreno - Plastination Project (Infographic)
Music, Video, and Games
- Rick Kumar and Calvin Tiu - To a Rapper's Delight (album)
- Rachel Yoakum - Fear is Contagious: Is Aids? (video)
- Nikki Gordon - Open the Box (tap essay)
This page was created by Justin Hodgson, Co-Lead Digital Gardener Initiative @ Indiana University and Associate Professor in the Dept. of English at IU Bloomington.
The initial version was created for the IU Digital Gardener Faculty Fellows program, but the work comes from a larger in-progress project on post-digital learners and transforming higher education.