Abstract
In order to be prepared for today's knowledge society, students need to be ICT literate. To ensure that all students become ICT literate requires systematic integration of ICT literacy into the curriculum at the general education level and within each academic discipline. Such integration requires faculty ICT literacy as it applies to their academic content area and instructional practice. Collaboration within academic domains, with expert partnerships of librarians and instructional designers, can boost ICT literacy and facilitate its effective integration for student learning. Therefore, such faculty competency also requires systematic coordination, training, support, and accountability. Efforts need to occur at the course, program, college, campus, and system level in order to ensure that all students learn, practice and apply ICT effectively and responsibly. The California State University Long Beach ICT Literacy Project exemplifies the process of developing a systematic and coordinated approach to ICT literacy into the curriculum.
TopBackground
This era is sometimes labelled the Information Society or the Knowledge Society, reflecting how information drives economies and societal action. As early as the 1991 SCANS (Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) report, governmental agencies have noted the need for employees who can: locate, interpret and organize information; communicate information; create documents; solve problems; work with a variety of technology; and know how to acquire new knowledge. The vast expansion and application of information is largely due to technological advances. At the 2013 World Summit on the Information Society, governments and world leaders stated that sustainable development depends on education. To that end, ICT (information and communication technology) facilitates access to, interaction with, and generation of knowledge. Within that framework, the participants noted:
The rapid diffusion of mobile communication, establishment of Internet exchange points (IXPs), the increased availability of multilingual content and Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and the advent of new services and applications, including m-health, mobile transactions, e-Government, e-education, e-business and developmental services, which offer great potential for the development of the knowledge societies (p. 3).
People now have greater access to ideas globally, and have a wider repertoire of tools to use and generate information. Intellectual capital has replaced material capital, which means that today’s learners must become competent in using and managing information and technology.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Collaboration: The process of sharing resources and responsibilities to create shared meaning and attain a common goal; interdependent cooperation.
Assessment: Evaluation of a behavior at one specific time under one specific condition.
Information Literacy: The ability to access, evaluate, use, manage, communicate and generate information.
Digital Resource: Usually an electronic document.
Digital Literacy: The ability to assess, use, manage, share and generate information effectively and purposefully using digital technology.
Instructional Design: A systematic analysis of training needs and the development of aligned activities within environments to facilitate learning and performance.
Infrastructure: The technological system to support telecommunications (e.g., facilities, cables, equipment, services, etc.).
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy: The ability to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, communicate information purposefully, knowledgeably, technically, and ethically.