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Implementing a Practice-Based Approach to Digital Literacy at a South African University
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Abstract
This paper
contributes to the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a social practice, which is informed by the
New Literacies Studies’ theoretical approach. The ideological approach adopted in this paper holds that literacy
is about being able to participate in
social practices and thus
,
a student
who is capable of carrying out his/her
disciplinary digital literacies
is considered as being digitally literate. In other words, the higher education
academic disciplines serve as contexts that determine the digital l
iteracies
-
the
discipline
-
specific
digitally
-
mediated practices.
The digital literacies conceptualisation informed the adaptation of Ng’s (2015) digital literacy framework to a
digital literacy practices framework
comprising
the technical, cognitive and social
-
emotional dimensions. Using
this framework, the study explored the digital literacy practices of a purposive sample of first year students from
two extended degree programmes. One hundred and three students
from the two
disciplines
(39 from Commerce
and 64 from Humanities) completed the questionnaire.
The data was analysed using Excel
,
and
a
Chi Square
test
was
run to determine possible correlations between variables
, where necessary
.
This paper thus interrogates
findings
from th
e
questionnaire
data
which reveal that the discipline
-
specific learning and assessment activities
instantiated students’ digital literacy practices in the three dimensions. The paper discusses how these practices
differ and/or overlap across the tw
o disciplines. These findings suggest that integrating digital literacies into the
course curricula by means of learning and assessment activities supports students in: (1) becoming digitally literate
with respect to their respective disciplines
;
and (2) a
cquiring digital literacy practices deemed fit for learning and
potential
employability.// Paper ID 233
Subject
Country
South Africa
Region
Africa
DOI
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Date
2019-09
ORCID
Corporate Author
Editor
Publisher
Commonwealth of Learning (COL)