Embedding digital literacy at Leeds Metropolitan University

At the 2012 LILAC conference, Sue Palmer and Wendy Luker presented on the theme of digital literacy as one of the newly selected graduate attributes at Leeds Metropolitan, including how a definition of Digital Literacy had been agreed across the institution, involving key stakeholders. Since that time, Academic Librarians have been involved as ‘global reviewers’ in reviewing all course and module approval templates submitted by course teams as part of Leeds Met’s review of its undergraduate curriculum, and have been able to exploit this opportunity to upgrade resource lists and to identify new ways of embedding digital literacy teaching throughout the undergraduate curriculum. They have also been able to take advantage of the introduction of digital literacy as a graduate attribute to offer a range of training opportunities for staff, working with the University’s Centre for Learning and Teaching. The infrastructure to support staff and students with the new graduate attributes has also been developed, through the University’s Skills for Learning Website, and also through bespoke collections developed for the University Repository. Building on the link between digital literacy and employability, Academic Librarians have also developed sessions on using digital literacy skills in applying for jobs and in the workplace, which will be delivered as part of the University’s Employability and Enterprise Fortnight in January 2013. This presentation will include: •Examples of the ways in which digital literacy teaching has been embedded across various areas of the curriculum, including new opportunities that have been taken since digital literacy was identified as a graduate attribute; •How the Review of the Undergraduate Curriculum gave opportunities for discussion and enhancement of resource / reading lists, which fed into embedding of digital literacy through increased inclusion of online resources, and the consequent rise in uptake of these as shown in usage statistics; •The impact of the implementation of the ‘Discover’ resource discovery tool simultaneously with the launch of digital literacy as a graduate attribute; •Description of the types of training sessions that have been run for academic and support staff on using a range of online resources to support the roll-out of digital literacy; •Demonstration of the various support mechanisms that have been developed, including materials produced by the Centre for Learning and Teaching, by the Skills for Learning Team, collections on the University Repository, and subject specific materials developed by Academic Librarians; •Examples from the workshop sessions run as part of the Employability and Enterprise fortnight; •Feedback from academic librarians, academic staff, learning technologists and students on lessons learned from the embedding of digital literacy as a graduate attribute at Leeds Met after the first year of implementation. Participants will be guided to a range of openly accessible support and teaching materials, including examples of workshops and teaching sessions already delivered.