A Digital Literacy Initiative in Honors: Perceptions of Students and Instructors about its Impact on Learning and Pedagogy

Researchers acknowledge the necessity of acquiring digital competencies to participate adequately in society (Ala-Mutka; Boyles; Cobo; Davies; Littlejohn, Beetham, & McGill; Teske & Etheridge; Tryon; Warf). Although the development of digital competencies has become increasingly important in higher education, integrating digital literacies in the college classroom has occurred at a slow pace. Honors programs and colleges represent one area of the academy that typically values a more traditional approach to skill development while resisting technology. My research study describes a digital literacy initiative in the Georgia State University Honors College, a large urban research university, and explores its perceived impact on teaching and learning. The study examines the activities introduced in the classroom and various disciplines, and it seeks to determine if the initiative’s goals were met. This study does not attempt to make any sweeping claims about whether digital literacy should be a primary focus of honors education; rather, its purpose is to discover how adapting pedagogy to include digital competencies might meet the objectives of undergraduate honors education. The research question asks how the intentional inclusion of digital competencies into the honors classroom affects learning and pedagogy, with the goal of providing a model for other honors programs and colleges seeking to implement and evaluate similar programs