Choose Your Own (Mis)Adventure: Practicing Digital Literacy Skills in the Community College Classroom

The lighting talk will outline the creation process of a digital literacy workshop for a diverse group of learners from scratch. Librarians instructing in a community college setting often work with a diverse student body‑ from different backgrounds and identities to levels of technology and research skills. To help students make the critical thinking leaps between textbook hypotheticals to relevant, real-life digital dilemmas, librarians can act as digital literacy educators and advocates. After teaching introductory library sessions to first-year students, I noticed a variety in the skill, comfort, and knowledge of using a computer in an academic and work setting. This inspired a homegrown, made from scratch approach to create opportunities to practice these digital literacy skills. I developed an original, “choose your own adventure” activity to help students in our first-year experience seminar get a handle on using college-wide resources and apply them to a hypothetical situation. For many students, this activity was the first time they used the college website to do exploratory research about academic programs, advising, transfer partnerships, and careers. The activity also aimed to incorporate information and media literacy skills like synthesizing information from a variety of formats and evaluating sources. In all, students met this digital literacy workshop with several different responses: from frustration and confusion to optimism and zeal. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of digital literacy skills in community colleges, workshopping their instruction sessions, and teaching in an ever-changing environment