Wanted: Mass digital literacy training for all higher ed students

Welcome to the Carnival of Journalism, which has been reincarnated courtesy of David Cohn. While I recall the carnival in its heydey of three or four years ago, this is my first time as a contributor.

This month’s topic as posed by Mr. Cohn:

The changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community: One of the Knight Commission‘s recommendations is to “Increase the role of higher education…..as hubs of journalistic activity.” Another is to “integrate digital and media literacy as critical elements for education at all levels through collaboration among federal, state, and local education officials.”

Okay — great recommendations. But how do we actually make it happen? What does this look like? What University programs are doing it right? What can be improved and what would be your ideal scenario? Or is this recommendation wrong to begin with? No box here to write inside of.

I’m going to tackle the second part of the Knight recommendation: Digital and media literacy.

In recent years, as enrollment in journalism schools has continued to grow, I listen as amusement as various folks scratch their heads in amazement. What could these people possibly be thinking? Don’t they know the media is dying? Why are they signing up for a dead-end major?

But I see it from a different view: To various degrees, everyone will be a content creator in the coming years. At the same time, as the number of content creators swells, and the platforms and volume of content explode, people will need to be equipped to wade through, evaluate, and critique what they read. People need to learn how to be both better creators and better consumers of media. These skills become more essential, more vital with every year.

We talked about this idea back in 2007–8, when I was knee-deep in the Next Newsroom Project, I was spending a lot of time at Duke University. I felt that one of the most progressive things Duke could to would be to create a digital literacy requirement. When I attended Duke (1987–1991), we were all required to take a freshman writing class, to ensure that we came out with a baseline of writing skills, something considered essential for our professional success.

But two decades later, in the same respect, students in higher education need a baseline of digital creation skills: editing video and audio, creating a blog, etc. We could debate the list of practicals skills, and they would always be shifting. Still, they will be vital.

At the same time, students need to be sharp critics of media, able to sift through and evaluate the reliability and reputation of sources, and quality of content. Much of the content will be unfiltered and without context. It will be up the consumer to find their way through this.

Knowing university politics, instituting a new requirement is bound to get all sorts of turf battles going. And I know there is a real cost: Creating enough facilities to have the capacity to train all these students. And you likely need a large number of grad students to do that teaching.

But the need is there. And institutions of higher learning that grasp this opportunity will be giving their students a huge advantage in whatever field they choose to enter. Strong digital literacy needs to become somthing our society considers a basic life skill.