What is Digital Literacy?
If you haven’t heard of digital literacy before, we’re here to deep dive into the concept below. Relevant to students, educators, employers, and employees, knowing what digital literacy is, why digital skills are so important, and where you or your organisation fall on the spectrum is crucial.
Why? Because most societies are moving toward a world reliant on technology to streamline work, learning, and our personal lives. By ensuring that you and those around you have the confidence and ability needed to navigate new technologies, you can ensure that your students and workforce are set up for success.
What is Digital Literacy?
Digital literacy is a person’s ability to understand and use technology. Similar to reading literacy or numeracy, the concept simply describes a person’s ability to learn, process, and use technology to help navigate their professional and personal lives.
Because many societies are transitioning to a heavily digital landscape, more students are learning through and using online platforms than ever before. To ensure that students can access and contribute to these resources in meaningful ways, educators and providers need to ensure every person has the core skills needed to navigate to success.
Further still, digital literacy is also applicable to the workplace--and because many employers are choosing to move online, organisations need to ensure they are upskilling their staff at the same rate. Why? Because without the skills, understanding, or confidence needed to navigate their company’s portals, employees risk feeling under equipped to do their job.
Is Digital Literacy the Same as Digital Learning?
Digital Literacy relates to how well a person understands and can use technology to access, navigate, and contribute to society. Depending on a learner’s individual literacy level, this can directly influence how well or how independently they can understand and use digital platforms in their work and personal life.
Digital Learning describes the act of learning through digital means (technology, software, websites, or applications). This can include the learning process a person goes through to understand technology—for example, a person who is first introduced to a new online student learning portal and then learns how to navigate it independently to the best of their ability.
What is the Digital Literacy Framework?
The Digital Literacy Skills Framework is a standardised approach to teaching students and employees digital skills. Because ‘Digital Literacy’ is a relatively new concept, the Australian government created a framework that outlines the key skills needed by students and employees that can structure their learning, track progress, and identify challenges or success.
How? Much like other core skills—including numeracy, reading, and writing—the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF) ensures that ‘Digital Literacy’ outlines:
The four levels of digital learning from beginner lessons through to advanced,
The milestones to be achieved that indicate and track a student’s progression, and,
The basic digital concepts and skills every person should know to best navigate our digitally reliant world.
Online Learning vs. Digital Learning
Online Learning means to receive, consent and assess your understanding of a dedicated subject matter through a digital platform.
Digital Learning indicates a person is learning a core skill identified in the ACSF. Much like oral communication, numeracy, and reading, digital learning and literacy is now a fundamental subject that should be offered to every person. The ACSF includes four levels of digital learning that can help structure, track, and progress students' learning so that they gain the foundational knowledge and skills needed to navigate society.
How Does Digital Literacy Help with Online Learning?
Digital literacy is a set of foundation skills learned by students and professionals that will help them learn additional content and subjects online. Because digital literacy equips people with the skills needed to navigate technologies, online platforms, and websites, learners are in a better position to receive their course online and complete it successfully.
Due to a growing gap between the technologies available online and the wider population’s digital literacy level, we risk some people facing additional barriers to learning, accessing social systems, and being able to partake in society without the upskilling needed to navigate this new world.
What are Digital Skills?
Digital skills are the tactile skills a person has that helps them use and understand technology. Much like other subjects, every person will have a different level of digital ability based on their level of independence, how well they grasp the subject, and experience.
Among the core skills included in the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF), digital literacy skills are now considered as vitally important to learners as:
Learning
Reading
Writing
Oral Communications
Numeracy
Much like the other core skills, the Digital Literacy Skills Framework has different competency levels that help teachers and non-education professionals assess a person’s ability to advance in the subject and participate in school or the workforce.
What is the Digital Skills Gap?
The digital skills gap refers to the growing gap between the current workforce’s ability to navigate technology and the digitally-reliant society we have created.
In other words, our current population of students and employees are struggling to navigate the new landscape because they may have limited digital skills. In order to close the gap, schools and organisations need to upskill their community to ensure they have the skills needed to independently navigate new platforms, resources, and devices.
Who Needs to Have Digital Literacy Skills?
In short—everyone! From professionals in the workplace to students in the classroom, every person should have the foundational skills needed to help navigate modern day life. Because both private and public organisations are transitioning online, all people should feel confident in their ability to navigate simple daily tasks (like banking) and feel that they can carry out their job with success.
We’ve highlighted just a few of the ways that digital literacy skills can apply to the following people and communities:
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More schools are incorporating software and applications into their everyday curriculums. Further, because COVID-19 dramatically increased the rate of online and remote learning, young people have needed to quickly adapt to completing lessons and work online instead of face-to-face. While this means that teachers can reach more students and continue lessons during Public Health restrictions, it also means that students need the basic skills of technology and digital devices to take part.
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Much like their students, teachers need to be able to deliver select lessons via mobile devices, computers, and in-classroom applications as well as adapt and deliver lessons via remote learning when needed. If you think that some of your teachers need to upskill to deliver their best work, investing in digital literacy learning courses will be the way to go.
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From primary schools to tertiary education professionals, delivering lessons both in the classroom and online will likely require some form of technology. Although this is an excellent way to teach students with different needs, accommodate different learning styles, and reach a wider student group, it also means that educators need to be able to confidently use these platforms.
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If your workplace is beginning to move online, upskilling your employees to be able to navigate internal or customer facing portals is a must. Whether you’re asking your team to report their project status online or communicate with potential clients by email, knowing how to navigate these portals independently will be crucial to their personal and professional success.
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Whether you’re an RTO, university, or primary education provider—the same skills for educators hold true. Registered Training Organisations will need to be able to:
Meet industry regulation requirements for delivering content and communicating with students online.
Meeting compliance standards for storing and accessing information online including student profiles, academic results, and facilitator personal information.
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Is your organisation growing? From hiring to payroll, performance management, and project management, there are key systems your company will likely need to implement to help manage your team. If this is the case for your organisation, both executives and entry-level staff need to be able to navigate online platforms to stay connected, aligned, and supported.
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With payroll functions, timesheets, and projects now being managed online, it’s vital that employees feel comfortable using your organisational platforms to complete their jobs to the best of their ability.
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Think that too much screen time can be bad for young people? While it’s true we don’t want any person spending too much time in front of a screen, chances are there are schools, programs, extracurricular activities, or social services you need to contact on behalf of your child. Whether you’re enrolling them in a new school or booking their appointments online, managing your family’s needs digitally will be much easier to do with basic digital literacy skills.
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From social services to medical appointments, renewing a driver’s licence and more, both public and private organisations are moving their customer-facing services and resources online. While some industries will retain face-to-face and in-person services, most industries—including banking, medical services, even shopping—are moving more of their people online to support customers from afar.
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Even if your kids don’t access mobile devices at home, chances are they are using them in the classroom. From educational software to apps designed to support kids’ mindfulness skills, digital literacy has been added to the Australian Core Skills Framework for good reason.
Along with communication, reading, writing, and numeracy, ensuring that a young person has foundational digital skills is crucial to minimising the barriers to their personal and professional success.
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Having foundational literacy skills can set employees, employers, students, and community members up for success. How? Because most resource providers now offer a digital way to learn, register, or upskill online, being able to navigate these new platforms will mean people are not limited to in-person course delivery.
The result? Organisations, educators, and content deliverers can:
Reach more people: Online learning and support means facilitators can access more people regardless of their location.
Streamline services: While some processes may still require a few steps, onboarding and offboarding customers, clients, workers, and students can be streamlined for faster delivery.
Minimise paper waste, overhead costs, and house documents online for long-term record keeping
Ensure their people have the basic skills needed to access and contribute to society at a broader level
Understanding The Importance of Digital Safety (eSafety)
As with any new subject or core skill, digital literacy education must cover and explore the safety issues that could come up when using digital technologies. Because we now have the means to use technology to:
Connect with global communities
Contact colleagues outside of work hours
Connect with peers and students outside of school hours, and,
Potentially be approached by people with malicious intentions
It’s imperative that learners understand the risks they could face online and how they can navigate or avoid them.
Some of the core concepts discussed about Digital eSafety include:
Protecting your own sensitive information including bank account details
Risks associated with connecting with people who have malicious intent (often seen in email phishing scams to gain access to personal information)
Connecting minors with adults in potentially unsupervised online settings
The risk of harmful behaviour including bullying, intimidation, or stalking—threats that, historically, were experienced offline
By equipping learners with an understanding of the potential risks they may witness online, the digital skills framework ensures that their learners are both well prepared to navigate technology and avoid risky or dangerous interactions.
What is a Digital Literacy Licence?
The Digital Literacy Licence (DLL) is a program that anyone can take to learn the foundational skills required for online education, either as a student or educator. At the end of each program participants will receive credentials to verify their digital knowledge. Our current two programs are targeted towards students (learners) and educators in educational settings including secondary and tertiary education, as well as Registered Training Organisations (RTOs).
Our program has been mapped to match the Australian Core Skills Framework developed by the Australian government. At the end of the program, all students will have completed interactive learning activities that guided them through the digital skills needed to set up for life-long success.
How Do You Get a Digital Literacy Licence?
At present the Digital Literacy Licence is delivered through our website in two unique ways:
A module for individual learners to sign-up and complete all four levels through self-directed study,
A platform for institutions to sign-up and enrol their educators and students at a discounted rate. This option allows for Enterprise members to brand and self-manage their platform as a turnkey solution for an internal learning platform.
Upskill Your Students and Employees to a Digital Literacy Licence Today!
The evidence as to why students, teachers, employees, and employers should have basic digital literacy skills is insurmountable. From a feeling of self-confidence that they have the skills needed to get their job done to navigating modern life online, we want all people to be able to upskill their technological understanding.
If you’re interested in a self-guided program, you can register for our single-student Digital Learning Licence program. Interested in upskilling your workforce? We have Enterprise memberships available that can be branded with your organisation’s logo to personalise an in-house learning system for your team.
Offering every person who completes a Digital Literacy Licence a digital credential issued by QVault, we know that getting the best out of your people begins by upskilling them online. Contact our team today to see how we can customise a digital learning experience for your organisation.