Digital Fluency and Social Media Use: An Empirical Investigation of WeChat Use

Social media has increasingly been used to deal with personal and professional issues. Past studies note that individuals of different digital fluency present distinct technology use behaviors. Yet, limited research has explored how digital fluency affects individuals’ motivations and the use of social media tools. Based on uses and gratifications theory and digital fluency literature, we develop a model to explore the relationship between digital fluency and social media use. We tested our model by analyzing 262 responses from WeChat users. Results show that digital natives (individuals of high digital fluency) tend to use WeChat to broaden social network while digital immigrants (individuals of low digital fluency) tend to enjoy WeChat use and to use WeChat to maintain ties with friends and fulfill their information needs. Our findings contribute to the literature by identifying the theoretical and practical roles of digital fluency in social media use

Digital fluency: necessary competence for teaching and learning in connected classrooms

Educators’ digital fluency has been noted as one of the most important skill required for effective curriculum delivery in connected classrooms. Research and anecdotal evidence show that even though many Western Cape classrooms have internet connectivity, many of the educators are unable to take advantage of the connectivity for teaching and learning. Hence, this paper focuses on the educators’ digital fluency as a necessary competence for effective curriculum delivery in connected classrooms. The study was done qualitatively. Randomly selected educators from public schools participated in the one-on-one and focus group interviews. Results show that most educators perceive their digital fluency and the complex knowledge of how to effectively integrate digital technologies into curriculum delivery to be inadequate. Hence they are unable to take advantage of the connectivity in the classrooms. Therefore, the authorities in education need to ensure educators are well equipped to develop digital fluency and the ways of integrating technologies into curriculum delivery

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants - Towards a Model of Digital Fluency

The article looks at the differences between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.” Digital natives are the new generation of young people born into the digital age, while “digital immigrants” are those who learnt to use computers at some stage during their adult life. Whereas digital natives are assumed to be inherently technologysavvy, digital immigrants are usually assumed to have some difficulty with information technology. The paper suggests that there is a continuum rather than a rigid dichotomy between digital natives and digital immigrants, and this continuum is best conceptualized as digital fluency. Digital fluency is the ability to reformulate knowledge and produce information to express oneself creatively and appropriately in a digital environment. The authors propose a tentative conceptual model of digital fluency that outlines factors that have a direct and indirect impact on digital fluency namely, demographic characteristics, organizational factors, psychological factors, social influence, opportunity, behavioral intention and actual use of digital technologies

MakeMe, codeme, connectus: Learning digital fluency through tangible magic cubes

Recent years have seen an increased empirical interest in designing new approaches to teaching digital fluency to wide audiences. Tangible physical computing interfaces provide much scope for teaching abstract digital fluency concepts in an engaging and playful way. However, questions remain as to how both the form factor and the corresponding task types of such interfaces can be best designed to support learning. In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore how digital fluency topics might be taught through making, discovery learning and coding by interacting with the tangible Magic Cubes toolkit (Figure 1). The workshop will culminate in a discussion of how tangible toolkits for learning can be better designed to encourage collaborative and engaging learning experiences

Conquering the digital divide: with a digital native who never was

As higher education moves to blended learning environments, a digital divide is emerging in the Australian higher education sector. This divide is predicated on differing digital skills and usage patterns, not access to digital devices. Access is not perceived to be the issue as numerous Australian secondary schools offer a school-issued laptop scheme. Yet many students transitioning to university are grappling with the necessary digital skills required to participate in a digital setting. Referred to as "digital natives", these young people were expected to be digitally proficient. This thesis challenges the existence of Mark Prensky's (2001) Digital Native and provides an analysis of how differing digital fluency stages influence perceived preparedness for university study. Conceptualising the growing inequalities arising from a widening digital divide, the thesis investigates impacts on the student experience, digital fluency and secondary schooling digital opportunities. The thesis reports on three studies drawn from three research questions. Using a mixed-mode approach centred on Critical Theory and Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), the thesis provides an analysis of the digital divide in Australian higher education. Study 1 reports on RQ1: "What is the relationship between socioeconomic, sociocultural/ geographic indicators and the digital divide?" Four hundred and nine first-year business students were surveyed at regional and urban Australian universities. This study provides empirical data on the digital divide and determines a link between digital fluency, socioeconomic status, sociocultural capital, digital identity and student self-reported preparedness and digital skills. Study 2 reports on RQ2: "Is digital fluency a precursor to preparedness for university study?" Fifteen of the surveyed respondents completed a digital test with usability testing software prior to an in-depth interview. Study 2 provides a link between access and application of digital environments in schooling and the development of digital fluency. This study presents data showing disadvantage indicators can be alleviated through access to digital learning environments during schooling. Study 3 reports on RQ3: "What enhances and develops digital fluencies?" and examines the digital divide from a student's perceptive. Case studies were developed from in-depth interviews and presented as techno-biographies to determine respondents' digital fluency stage. These techno-biographies outline differing experiences and opportunities for digital skills development between secondary schools. Study 3 explores prior digital experience to identify digital influences, skills, knowledge, attitude and mindset. The study suggests that influences and prior digital experiences contribute to digital fluency and perceived preparedness for university study. The three studies are intertwined in their investigation of an association between disadvantage indicators, prior digital experience and stages of digital fluency. Particular attention is placed on examining the distribution and allocation of digitally resourcing in secondary schools. The three studies culminate in a concept model to illustrate the link between the distribution of resources, digital fluency and preparedness for university study. The thesis demonstrates a link between access to a learning management system (LMS) or digital curriculum during secondary school and disadvantage indicators. Access to a school LMS consistently produced higher self-reported digital skills than those without, even when disadvantage indicators were present. The issue of perceived preparedness for university study and/or a digital learning environment was also linked to participants who had access to a school LMS. Rural, regional, low socioeconomic, low sociocultural capital and state-school participants were less likely to have had access to a digital curriculum during secondary schooling and therefore less likely to report preparedness for university study. Conversely, these disadvantage indicators were overcome if participants had access to an LMS or digital curriculum. The thesis identifies a digital divide in higher education emanating from the distribution, use and allocation of secondary schooling digital resources and prior experience. The resourcing of secondary schools with school-issued laptops did not increase digital fluency or perceived preparedness for university study. However, the implementation of a digital curriculum or LMS produced significant outcomes in the development of digital fluency. These findings illustrate the influence of digital immersion in the formation of fluency. Resourcing schools without a clear digital curriculum does not increase digital fluency. If the digital divide is to be conquered, the appropriate application of digital resources in secondary schools must be implemented to enable the development of digital fluency

Building a Sustainable Model for Developing Digital Fluency in Higher Education Faculty on a Shoestring Budget

Building on experience with a campus digital fluency initiative, a sustainable professional development model has been developed that is transferable to mentoring the next generation of leaders in many areas in higher education. Data from four years of faculty development in digital fluency will be shared along with how to get buy-in from administration and motivation for faculty to change current teaching styles to incorporate more technology into existing pedagogy

Digital Fluency Initiative and Faculty Development

A faculty-led peer mentoring program integrating education technologies and complementary pedagogies to facilitate student engagement and learning outcomes

M-Learning : focus on digital fluency

The present article deals with the creation of a pedagogical architecture (PA) to assist teachers and students in their development of digital fluency through mobile learning. For this we chose a qualitative case study approach, in a distance education discipline for students of different graduate courses from a university in southern Brazil. As concluding actions, we found that the application of the created PA can help in the planning and development of activities that foster digital fluency through m-learning, expanding the possibilities of the teaching and learning processes of students in the distance modality

Toward addressing the participation gap of the digital divide: a digital fluency perspective of millennials

The purpose of this study is to offer a multi-disciplinary framework to examine the continuing digital participation divide and within-group use variance among millennials. We focus on millennials due to the size of their population segment. We further critically examine assumptions of homogeneous adoption of emerging Information and communication technologies (ICTs) among “digital natives.” We describe the concepts of digital fluency and capital enhancing activity to explore how and why millennials invest their time in using ICTs. Digital fluency reflects the knowledge, skills, and cognitive capabilities needed to maximize the use of ICTs, whereas capital enhancing activities increase human capital in such a way to offer individuals more opportunities for upward mobility. Employing theories from second language learning, economics, and communication studies we describe the antecedent and composite elements of digital fluency, and its role in motivating capital enhancing use of technology. Future research implications are also described

Digital fluency and the construction of pedagogical strategies for distance learning

The objective of the study is to identify Pedagogical Strategies (PS) that can contribute to the construction of Digital Fluency in the Distance Learning (DL) context. Technological changes in society include their own set of knowledge, skills, and attitudescalled Digital Competences(DC). Specifically, in distance learning, digital fluency is considered paramount since it is related to the use of technologies where the subject feels digitally active, especially with regard to the production of content/materials for the virtual environment. This can be divided into five specific competences: Content Production, Data Protection, Networking, Virtual Resilience, andTeamwork. Thus, PSwere created from the analysis of competences in order to assist the instructorsto build them with their students in the DL environment. This study used a qualitative methodology based on an interpretative approach. The instrument used for data collection was an online questionnaire evaluating the Pedagogical Strategies for the Digital Fluency Competence. The target audience of the research was 90 specialists in the area of distance learning who responded and suggested changes to thePS. The results enabled the development of a framework with 46 Pedagogical Strategies divided into the 5specific competences of Digital Fluencyto aid teachers in meetingstudents’need