Competent, Literate, Fluent: The What and Why of Digital Initiatives

In the 2019 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Key Issues in Teaching and Learning, digital and information literacy maintains a top-five position for the third consecutive year. A growing number colleges and universities are developing or considering initiatives and frameworks to promote the digital literacy of students, faculty, and staff. While the ELI list refers to "literacy," this topic is also addressed in terms of "competency" and "fluency." Are these terms interchangeable, or is there value in distinguishing among them?

Is it significant that Bryn Mawr College has a framework for digital competencies, Virginia Tech is launching a program in digital literacy, and the University of Mary Washington has a curricular initiative for advanced digital fluency? And what does it mean that Penn State has shifted its focus from digital literacy to digital fluency? Obviously there is considerable overlap among the terms, and presumably each of these institutions aims toward similar outcomes. Still, as nuances and connotations of meaning resonate within different audiences and contexts, it is worthwhile to probe for distinctions.

Exploring the Terminology and Rationale Behind this Movement

Jennifer Sparrow and Clint Lalonde have argued that digital fluency is a distinct capacity above and beyond digital literacy. Sparrow observes,

How is digital fluency different from digital literacy? In learning a foreign language, a literate person can read, speak, and listen for understanding in the new language. A fluent person can create something in the language: a story, a poem, a play, or a conversation. Similarly, digital literacy is an understanding of how to use the tools; digital fluency is the ability to create something new with those tools.

We might extend this line of thought to propose that there is an arc or trajectory that begins with competencies, expands into literacies, and fully blossoms into fluencies.

This perspective differentiates discrete elements of digital formation. Competency describes the acquisition of technical skills with digital applications, such as knowing how to produce and edit video, create a data visualization, or manage a web domain. While one may assume that learning "how to" occurs because of a desire to complete specific projects, the skills constitute distinct competencies that tend to be tool and application specific. The level of competency as such does not attend to the end result or project to which the skills are applied, nor to the context in which their performance occurs.

Digital competencies are a necessary but not sufficient condition of digital literacies. Here I differ from Sparrow, who regards digital literacy as "an understanding of how to use the tools." Rather, digital literacy situates tool-based and skill-based competency within a larger framework oriented toward successful knowledge production and participation in the digitally mediated aspects of one's social and cultural worlds. The digitally literate person comprehends a range of contextual issues and larger implications of the use of digital applications. For example, digital literacy involves a critical consciousness of issues such as the use (and misuse) of personal data, accessibility and inclusion in the design of digital applications, fair and appropriate use of digital content, and the development of digital identity and agency.

At a further level, to be digitally fluent involves exercising digital skills and understanding to create generative knowledge and experiences. If being literate indicates a certain level of knowledge in a specific domain (e.g., cultural literacy, financial literacy), being fluent signifies the capacity to make original contributions to that domain, beyond mastering existing content. A digitally fluent person can evolve with the rapidly shifting digital landscape, quickly adapting to new applications and methods as well as emerging contextual issues. With respect to pedagogy, for example, Lalonde suggests:

A digitally fluent instructor is able to compare, contrast, and analyze differences in technologies, and understand how those differences might impact their pedagogy, and adjust accordingly. This ability to adjust accordingly is, to me, one of the biggest traits that distinguishes the digitally fluent instructor from the digitally literate one.

It would be unhelpful to insist upon a rigid consistency in the use of these terms; what I've proposed is certainly open to debate. At the same time, the quest for precision can stimulate discussions and push us to clarify the outcomes we seek to promote in students. Keeping these terms in a certain semantic tension and interplay with one another can create an impetus and framework for deeper conversations.

Articulating Goals for Digital Frameworks and Initiatives

An understanding of what digital frameworks and initiatives seek to promote can lead to persuasive articulations of their overall objectives. These can be described on three levels:

• First, digital initiatives aim to enhance students' success after graduation. Graduates have the best career-related and academic prospects when combining disciplinary and general knowledge with identifiable digital proficiencies. Particularly for students within the humanistic disciplines, a robust formation in the digital sphere can contribute to an attractive portfolio for endeavors beyond graduation.
• A second major objective is to develop "digital citizenship." Social, political, and cultural discourse is increasingly mediated through the flow of information in digital networks, and digital initiatives can prepare students to understand how to participate in them responsibly. The health of democratic institutions depends on an informed citizenry, and thus it is incumbent to understand the design and operation of the systems by which we access news and important information about the world.
• At a third level, digital initiatives can promote deep reflection upon the distinctive nature and ethics of knowing and knowledge in the digital age. How are attention and memory, reading and composition, and teaching and learning being reshaped in the digitally networked information ecosystem? How is knowledge discovered, constructed, and expressed, and what is its authority? What are the long-term consequences of digital technologies and practices for the intellectual and moral order of society?

There is again an intrinsic trajectory of sorts in which the relatively more instrumental and utilitarian argument for a digital initiative (greater student success in the labor market) opens up to broader considerations of the social good and, ultimately, toward deeper philosophical reflection upon and critical analysis of the digital world itself.

Different campus audiences may resonate more strongly with one or another of these arguments, just as they might prefer to speak of competencies, literacies, or fluencies. It may be reasonable to expect, for example, that offices of career service and development would gravitate toward an emphasis on students demonstrating competencies to potential employers, while faculty might be more oriented toward an emphasis on literacies and fluencies, particularly within their disciplinary areas. A successful digital initiative will strive to bring all perspectives into an ongoing dialogue that offers students a comprehensive formation for life in the digital world.

Morris Pelzel is the Director of Academic Technology and the Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative at Grinnell College.