Abstract:

Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are lagging behind the pace of digital age; students go into Higher Education (HE) with varying levels of digital literacy acquired from previous experience and interests. These need to be understood, supported and aligned with the university offering in order to enhance the undergraduate learning and overall study experience.

Beetham (2010) defines digital literacy as “those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society” Way of life is enhanced with digital technologies, businesses and community operates in a fast growing digital age with emerging and innovative technologies as the rudder driving digital literacy. HEIs as a larger entity that operates within the greater digital society struggle to keep pace with new emerging digital technologies.

The students’ learning and overall study experience also contributes immensely to relevant HEI graduate attributes and employability including further career progression in early professional years. It is thus important for them to fit into and match up with expected level of digital literacy in the society and relevant professional field at transition from HE.

However, HEIs have the challenging objective of identifying and understanding major points to integrate digital technologies in programmes, courses and career development activities offered during undergraduate journey. Also, challenges in the ability to balance the lecturer to student digital literacy level so that lecturer-student relationship is not lost but rather simultaneously enhanced.

Graduate employers are similarly expectant and aligning recruitment attributes with the digital age. Therefore the responsibility lies on HE to enhance learning and students’ experience by incorporating the right level of digital literacy into higher education so that employers expectations are not cut short.

HEIs must be able to match digital literacy offerings with student’s expectations and prior experience in order to enhance undergraduate experience, also enhance learning by incorporating the right level of digital literacy into pedagogic activities in order to output highly employable digital literate graduates.

Through “Digital Literacy in HE”, a model for holistic curriculum development can be established, integrated and used to instil digital literacy at the heart of the student journey and enhance their overall learning experience. This paper discusses the holistic approach.

Keywords:

Digital Literacy, enhanced learning, Digital age, learning experience, Higher Education, graduates attributes employable, students.