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Advancing Digital Opportunity: A Higher Education Toolkit

Digital Skills

Frameworks

BRIDGES Digital Skills Framework, WorldEd

  • A Holistic Framework for Building Digital Resilience: BRIDGES defines the skills needed to pursue personal, educational, and career goals in an increasingly digital world AND offers the tools and resources needed for learners and training providers to build these skills.
    • April 2024 Public DRAFT (final OER framework coming soon).
    • The BRIDGES Digital Skills Framework “includes 75 skills across 10 domains. These domains can be further organized into three overarching categories”: 
      • Foundational Skills
        • Gateway Skills
        • Mobile
        • Device Ownership
        • Privacy and Security
      • Productivity Skills
        • Communication
        • Creation
        • Workplace and Productivity
      • Independent Learning Skills
        • Information Skills
        • Lifelong Learning
        • Online Life
  • Skills Instruction: The Digital Skills Library provides a searchable database of over 1,800 lessons, videos, tutorials, and other learning resources, all aligned to BRIDGES.
  • Tech-based Instructional Routines: The EdTech Integration Strategy Toolkit provides a library of edtech "routines" that leverage evidence-based strategies while embedding BRIDGES skills.
  • Digital Skill Integration: SkillBlox organizes thousands of free and open educational resources, allowing you to create engaging lessons that integrate BRIDGES skills.

Subject Area Frameworks for Adult Learners (PDF, 4MB), CrowdED Learning

  • The CrowdED Learning initiative has developed aggregate frameworks to provide a structure for organizing resources and to support learning in five subjects relevant to adult learners: Civics Education, Digital Literacy, Financial Literacy, Health Literacy, and Workforce Preparation.
  • An aggregate framework is developed by bringing together collections of assessments, standards, and curricula to ensure that the resulting framework is thorough and can be used in conjunction with these other resources. 
    • The Digital Literacy framework  (pages 8-10) includes aggregated information from Northstar Digital Literacy Assessments, ISTE standards, GCFLearnFree lessons, and other resources known to support digital skills development.

Assessments, Learning Resources, & Curricula

Learning Resources - Foundational Digital Skills (all learners)

Northstar Digital Literacy, Literacy Minnesota (a non-profit leader in adult literacy and education resources)

  • Standards-based, online assessments and educational tools for basic digital skills (essential computer skills, essential software, and using technology in daily life).
  • Features include self-paced online learning modules, curriculum and detailed lesson plans, student dashboard, robust data and reporting features, and digital badges and certificates.
  • Potential uses:
    • Orientation module for incoming students
    • Imbed digital skills assessments and learning modules in the curriculum
    • Pre-test to assess instructional needs
    • Use the lesson plans for in-class instruction
    • Remote proctoring
    • Upskilling for college employees
    • Digital navigator programs (students, staff, or community members)
  • NOTE: The Board of Regents and LOUIS Libraries provide access to all LOUIS-member institutions, including WorkReadyU programs.
  • Contact Rebecca Kelley at rebecca.kelley@laregents.edu to learn more about implementing Northstar at your institution.

Digital Skills Library, EdTech Center @ World Education

SkillBlox

  • From CrowdED Learning, an initiative of World Education
  • Makes it easy for instructors to find, organize, adapt, and share quality free content (OER) with learners.
  • Search by skill, select activities, customize playlists, and share/assign (via text, share code, or embed onto a website or LMS).
  • Aligns with the WorldEd BRIDGES Digital Skills Framework and includes resources from the Digital Skills Library.

Digitallearn.org

  • From the Public Library Association in partnership with AT&T.
  • Short modules (6 minutes - 36 minutes).
  • Categories include: “Starting Out”, “Connecting with Others”, “Being Safe Online”, “Job Skills”, “Being Productive”, and “Mobile Devices”.

Skills Assessment (PDF, 333KB), National Digital Inclusion Alliance

  • Useful as a digital navigator tool to get a general idea of someone’s comfort with technology.

GCFGlobal.org

Typing.com 

EdTech Technical Assistance Library, CREATE Adult Skills Network

  • Provides guidance to practitioners and adult education leaders on integrating or advancing instruction through edtech and other digital technology. 
  • Resources include technology integration and digital skills frameworks, technology adoption checklists, webinars highlighting promising resources and strategies, and technology enhanced lesson plans and guidance.

Career and Technical Education Colab Toolbox, Urban Institute 

  • Research-informed community of practice of community and technical colleges to build knowledge and develop tools to address inequities for students of color in credit-bearing online CTE programs.

Senior Planet (AARP) - provides digital skills training that is targeted at older populations.

Learning Resources - Advanced (or Subject-/Discipline-Specific) Digital Skills

Microsoft Learn 

  • Browse All Training Courses - Learn new skills and discover the power of Microsoft products with step-by-step guidance.
  • Student Hub - Unlock your potential in the world of AI
  • Educator Center - Dive deep into learning with interactive lessons, earn professional development hours, acquire certifications and find programs that help meet your goals.
  • Career Paths - Explore training, certifications, job listings, and land the job you desire
    • Using Plans, stay on track with training and develop your skills on Microsoft Learn with interactive modules and learning paths, take practice assessments and prepare for certifications.

Verizon Skill Forward 

  • Collaboration between edX and Verizon aimed at providing career-enhancing online courses focused on high-demand skills to facilitate long-term career growth.
  • Free for any participant during the 12 months with the program
  • Participants receive one (1) year of free access to edX’s self-paced, expert-led online programs
  • Time to complete a certification varies by program, but some certifications can be earned in as little as a month
  • Advanced digital skills topics include Coding, Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, and AI

Research

Closing the Digital Skill Divide (PDF, 2MB), by Amanda Bergson Shilcock, Roderick Taylor, and Nye Hodge, National Skills Coalition (2023)

  • 92% of jobs - across all industries - require digital skills.
  • Previous NSC research found that 31% of workers don’t have the foundational digital skills (PDF, 1.6MB) needed for today’s jobs.
  • These findings point to a significant digital skill divide and that public investments in closing this digital skill divide can generate measurable economic payoff for businesses, workers, and the broader economy.
  • In Louisiana, 90% of jobs require digital skills
    • From LOUIS-hosted webinar with NSC, “Closing the Digital Skill Divide: the payoff for Louisiana workers, business, and the economy” (slides and recording)

The Myth of the Digital Native: How Colleges Are Dealing With Student Digital-Literacy Gaps, The Chronicle of Higher Education (2023)

  • National survey of more than 1,200 faculty, higher education leaders, and students from a variety of institutions.
  • 78% of students said colleges strongly contributed to their digital proficiency.
  • 85% of students said digital skills should be a bigger part of their curriculum.
  • 84% of faculty and 89% of college leaders agreed
  • 36% of faculty and leaders think their college instructors are “somewhat unprepared” or “not at all prepared” to teach digital skills.
  • Only 32% of students feel “very well” prepared to use digital technology in their future jobs.
  • Only 15% of faculty and 16% of leaders think students are very well prepared to use digital tools in a work environment.

AI Tools & AI Literacy

GenAI Resources for Educators, EdTech Center @ World Education 

Bridging the AI Divide: A Call to Action (op-ed), Adela de la Torre and James Frazee, Insider Higher Ed  

Codaptive Labs

How can educational leaders strengthen digital equity in an age of AI?, Jeremy Roschelle and D’Andre J. Weaver, Digital Promise (2024)

AI and the next digital divide in education, Michael Trucano, Brookings (2023)

A New Digital Divide: Student AI Use Surges, Leaving Faculty Behind, Inside Higher Ed (2024)

Generative AI and Postsecondary Instructional Practices: Findings from a National Survey of Instructors, ITHAKA S+R (2024)

End of Semester AI Report: More college students say AI is helping them get better grades, Pearson (2024)

Public Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence (AI) (PDF, 1.8MB), Rachel Unruh, National Skills Coalition (July 2024)

  • Over two-thirds (68%) of voters believe that AI is a serious or very serious problem currently facing American workers.
  • Two-thirds (64%) of voters believe that lack of access to training programs that help people work alongside new technologies, like AI, is a problem facing workers.
  • 85% of voters would support a policy that provides skills retraining at no cost to any worker who loses their job due to automation or artificial intelligence.

Information Literacy

Information literacy is a set of skills that people need to find, understand, evaluate, and share information. (Institute of Museum and Library Services)

Information literacy is the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning. (Association of College and Research Libraries)

InformationLiteracy.gov, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)

Journey to Information Literacy, IMLS

  • “By cultivating information literacy in your community, you can empower community members to navigate today’s complex information environment and make informed decisions. Adapt the steps on this page to build information literacy in your community.”
  • Includes real-world examples from libraries, museums, and education professionals across the country. 

Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, Association of College & Research Libraries

  • The Framework “opens the way for librarians, faculty, and other institutional partners to redesign instruction sessions, assignments, courses, and even curricula; to connect information literacy with student success initiatives; to collaborate on pedagogical research and involve students themselves in that research; and to create wider conversations about student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the assessment of learning on local campuses and beyond.”
  • Six concepts anchor the frames:
  • Authority Is Constructed and Contextual
  • Information Creation as a Process
  • Information Has Value
  • Research as Inquiry
  • Scholarship as Conversation
  • Searching as Strategic Exploration

Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) Literacy Community, MERLOT

  • MERLOT’s ICT Literacy Community engages discipline faculty, library faculty, administrators and other stakeholders who share a common interest in enhancing the quality of teaching and learning for students so that they will graduate with the necessary critical ICT knowledge, skills and dispositions to be successful information consumers and producers.
  • Includes a curated collection of resources and exemplary practices to explore, reuse, revise, and remix, including ICT literacy standards and guidelines, a library of online teaching and learning resources, and examples of institutional practices for ICT literacy.

News Literacy

News literacy is the ability to determine the credibility of news and other information and to recognize the standards of fact-based journalism to know what to trust, share and act on. (News Literacy Project)

Digital Resource Center, Center for New Literacy at Stony Brook University

  • Register to access free news literacy resources.
  • Undergraduate instructors - Access a library of curated curriculum (OER), lectures, and exercises, including a weekly update of fresh materials.
  • Students - Access video tutorials and other materials to help students  work independently or prepare for a "flipped classroom." Note: the materials are meant to be used as a supplement to in-classroom lessons on news literacy.
  • Teachers (Grades 6-12) - Access lesson plans and other learning materials.

News Literacy Project - A nonpartisan education nonprofit to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society

  • Educator Tools - Teach your students to become news literate with tools and services created for educators.
    • Resource Library - Classroom resources for educators teaching news literacy (K-12+), including lesson plans, classroom activities, infographics, quizzes, and more.
    • The Sift - Weekly newsletter delivers relevant media news and recent examples of misinformation, along with prompts and tips for classroom discussions and activities.
    • Checkology - Browser-based platform for students in grades 6-12.
  • Tools for Everyone - Free resources for the public, including an e-learning platform, an app, a new podcast, shareable tips, tools, quizzes and an annual news literacy event.
    • RumorGuard - Debunking platform for the public with examples of viral misinformation and guidance on key news literacy concepts.