Survey of AMICAL members’ institutional approaches to digital literacies

What do “digital literacies” mean in your institution-level conversations about student learning outcomes?

What kind of human resources are in place at your institution to work toward digital literacy-related outcomes?

AMICAL invites member institutions to participate in a survey that will gather, analyze, and share back with members information about how these questions are being answered at our 29 different member institutions. AMICAL Representatives and other relevant colleagues have received instructions for participating in this “AMICAL inventory of institutional statements & human resources supporting digital literacies.”

Digital literacies are a key challenge for higher ed

AMICAL’s member institutions share the goal of offering an international liberal arts education that prepares students to be critically thinking learners, scholars and citizens of an increasingly digital world. Digital literacies can be seen as a basic requirement for enabling such outcomes, and they are increasingly recognized as an essential issue for higher education generally. “Improving Digital Literacy” was recognized in this year’s New Media Consortium Horizon Report as one of the “Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption,” while “Digital and Information Literacies” was among the top 5 Key Issues in Teaching and Learning for 2019 spotted by EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.

Goals of this survey

Our study aims to find out how AMICAL institutions are responding to these challenges by adopting digital literacies as an institutional goal, and to help members learn from the approaches their peers are taking. Ultimately we hope to identify opportunities for strategic consortial actions or resources that will advance digital literacy initiatives across AMICAL institutions.

What we’ll do with the data

Responses will be shared with other AMICAL members, and possibly with a broader audience through presentations or publications. If you would not like certain information or documents to be shared outside of AMICAL, however, just tell us so in your response.

Who may need to be involved

Your institution’s AMICAL Representative should complete the form or coordinate with a relevant colleague to complete it. In preparing responses, reach out to local colleagues most relevant to each question, for example:

• persons with responsibility for gen ed or first year experience programs or their curricula
• assessment officers
• directors of centers for teaching and learning
• library directors
• deans/provosts

Deadline: 20 January

If you will not able to obtain all requested information by our deadline, let us know as soon as possible to see if we can accommodate a later submission.

Participate!

If you’re the AMICAL Representative at your institution, you should have received instructions and a link. If you’re not the Representative, contact your AMICAL Representative for more information on how to contribute to this survey.