ACC Library Services: Future of Teaching & Learning: Digital Fluency

For higher education students, developing digital literacy enhances their value to future employers and appeal in the graduate labour market. Findings highlight the need for increased focus on digital literacy adaptability and industry-relevant experience within curriculum.

An increasing amount of literature from academic, governmental and non-governmental organizations points to the need for post-secondary institutions to do more to prepare students to be fluent in the consumption, understanding and use of digital media and tools. Digital fluency is increasingly seen as an essential skillset for graduates’ employability and for their citizenship, but while there is strong consensus about the need for students to be more digitally fluent, there is less consensus about what digitally fluency is, or about how to teach it.

The rapid increase in recent years in the number of different digital competency frameworks, models, and strategies has prompted an increasing popularity for making the argument in favor of the need to evaluate and assess digital competence. To support the process of digital competence assessment, it is consequently necessary to understand the different approaches and methods. This paper carries out a systematic literature review and includes an analysis of the existing proposals and conceptions of digital competence assessment processes and methods in higher education, with the aim of better understanding the field of research.