1 Introduction

The Library at Monash University had an established reputation for contributing to the development of a range of skills, going beyond ‘information skills’ (Smith, 2011; Torres et al., 2014) using the MELT (Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching) frameworks described in Chap. 2 of this book. Over the years, Monash University Library (MUL) had become adept at responding to various emergent skill agendas by being able to conceptualise the links between research skills and other skill sets (i.e. work skills). This provided the ideal environment to undertake the development of a sister framework with the view of articulating the digital skills students need to develop as part of their university studies. The result became known as the Digital Skills Development (DSD) framework (https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/1652437/DSD-22.05.20.pdf).

2 Collaborative Partnerships

The DSD framework was the result of collaboration between the Library's Research and Learning Skill Leads, academics and other learning and teaching specialists across the University. The group, which became known as the Digital Skills Working Group, was formed in early 2017 to look at the creation of a framework that would describe the digital skills,  attributes and capabilities required for ‘collaborating, learning, researching, working, and functioning’ in a digital age (Torres et al., 2018). It was acknowledged that while content knowledge is taught in class, providing is explicit instruction with appropriate levels of incremental guidance is rarely given to students in terms of the digital skills required to complete learning activities and assignments. The working group’s familiarity and success applying the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching or MELT (Willison, 2017; Willison, 2020) led to exploring how digital skills could be represented using a taxonomy for describing such skills within a learning continuum that explicates their development informed by the same guiding parameters as the MELT.

As Cuban et al. (2001) point out, many educators, policy makers and business leaders assume that just equipping students with technology will somehow lead to improved digital outcomes. But as Bennett and Maton (2010) have argued, access and exposure are only part of the picture and that it is interests, motivation and need that influences young people’s experience of technology. Furthermore, it seems that everyday technology use may not be an indicator of readiness to use technology at University as part of formal learning (Bennett & Maton, 2010). Most importantly, numerous studies (Duncan-Howell 2012; Margaryan et al., 2011; Sánchez et al., 2011) have found that learners’ digital skills vary greatly and are limited to a narrow range of established technologies, and that too often, school leavers have not achieved the levels of digital competence expected upon entrance to further studies.

Within this context, it was envisaged that the DSD framework would be useful in at least two ways: it would provide educators with a shared language to guide the development of students’ digital skills, and it would address the challenge of making digital skills visible in the curriculum and in assessment design. Like its sister frameworks, the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework  (Willison & O’Regan 2006, 2018) and the Work Skill Development (WSD) framework  (Bandaranaike, Willison & Monash University Library, 2019), the DSD framework would take a developmental view of learning by guiding educators to build students’ skills incrementally towards increasing self-reliance (Willison et al., 2016).

3 The Digital Skill Development (DSD) Framework

The DSD framework describes the skills students require in order to engage in digital contexts for learning, working and functioning in society. The definition of digital skills adopted by the Working Group was taken from Martin and Grudziecki (2006):

[Digital skills are] the awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital tools and facilities to identify, access, manage, integrate, evaluate, analyse and synthesise digital resources, construct new knowledge, create media expressions, and communicate with others, in the context of specific life situations, in order to enable constructive social action; and to reflect upon this process (p. 255).

The Working Group favoured this broad definition of digital literacy because it encompasses skills required for the consumption of digital information as well as the skills required for creating digital information. As such, this goes beyond describing digital skills as skills for information-seeking purposes and focuses on the role higher order cognitive (i.e. integrate, evaluate, analyse and synthesise) and metacognitive skills play in the use of technology.

The DSD shares the pedagogical parameters of the other MELT frameworks. Like the RSD and WSD, it is comprised of a vertical and a horizontal axis. The vertical axis depicts the six digital skills or ‘Digital Skill Facets’, presented as verb couplets with accompanying descriptors, a guiding question and an adjective referring to the affective domain. The Digital Skill Facets and Descriptors are as shown in Table 15.1.

Table 15.1 The horizontal axis of the DSD depicting Facets and Descriptors
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The horizontal axis presents a continuum for the incremental development of student autonomy as informed by Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978) described here as the ‘Scope for Student Autonomy’, depicted in Table 15.2.

Table 15.2 The vertical axis of the DSD depicting the Scope for Student Autonomy
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The Scope for Student Autonomy will vary for each learner depending on the learning context, the skills the student needs to draw on in that context and where the student is positioned within the autonomy or learning continuum in relation to each Digital Skill Facet. It is therefore important to apply the framework to a given context (i.e. learning at university) or to have a digital technology in mind, i.e. augmented reality (AR), to understand how the DSD framework provides guidance for educators as a pedagogical tool. The information in Fig. 15.1 taken from the verso of the DSD illustrates this point:

Fig. 15.1
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(Reproduced with permission from Torres et al., 2018)

DSD Framework Verso.

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In addition to the above, the Working Group felt that an umbrella statement which encapsulated the social and ethical considerations pertinent to all areas of digital use was needed. The statement ‘Applies social and ethical protocols for e-safety and wellbeing of self and others, taking account of digital profile, footprint and impact’ runs parallel to the vertical axis and is intended to provide an ‘ethos’ that underpins all the Facets mentioned in Table 15.1.

4 Piloting the Digital Skill Development Framework

Academics in the Faculty of Education became interested in investigating the digital literacy levels of first year students after poor assignment results raised suspicions that not all students had the digital skills required to be successful in studies at university. As Bennett and Maton (2010) have noted, widely held assumptions that students are ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2001) who are ‘tech-savvy’ and immersed in digital technologies is flawed. In fact, a study by McLeod and Carabott (2019) of undergraduate Australian students found that a significant proportion of students new to university struggled with the technologies they encountered as part of their study (i.e. Learning Management System, library systems, administrative systems). Furthermore, statistics from the Australian National Assessment Program (NAP) which rates IT proficiency of secondary school students at Year 10 seem to support this trend. In 2017, NAP found that only 54% of students at Year 10 reached the proficiency level expected at that year level (NAP, 2018). This ‘skills gap’ ultimately leads to a mismatch between the digital skills students need to do well at university and the digital skills students actually arrive at university with (McLeod & Carabott, 2019; Murray & Pérez, 2014). Academics in the Education faculty at Monash University realised they needed to provide more explicit instruction on using digital technologies and developing digital skills in their courses. It was within this context that the Library approached the course coordinator about piloting the DSD in the Diploma of Tertiary Studies. This programme was considered ideal as it feeds into multiple undergraduate courses including Education, Nursing, Business and Science.

5 Designing the Workshop

We designed a 2-hour workshop based on the skills described in the DSD framework with the intention of demonstrating to students that digital skill development, much like academic skill development, is important for success at university. To that end, the workshop was purposefully designed as an interactive, hands-on workshop meant to guide students through the requirements of an assignment task and in doing so, make the digital skills required for successful completion of that task explicit. The aims of the workshop were as follows:

  1. 1.

    Identify the range of digital skills needed for learning.

  2. 2.

    Develop awareness of what ‘digital skills’ encompass.

  3. 3.

    Reflect on the importance of digital skills for further study.

  4. 4.

    Provide an experience of using digital tools for learning.

The workshop was designed and delivered in the curriculum by two teaching teams of librarians and learning skills advisers. The 2-hour workshop was delivered to a total of 88 students across two Monash campuses.

In addition, we used the DSD framework to create an online self-assessment tool to help students develop awareness of their digital skills (Table 15.3). Students were asked to complete this self-assessment twice. Once before attending the 2-hour workshop at the beginning of semester and again in Week 7 after submitting the assignment. The tool asks students to consider how autonomously they could carry out specific digital tasks and to reflect on ‘how much guidance’ they perceived they required from others in demonstrating these skills. Students reflected on their ability to demonstrate these skills by aligning their responses to a scale informed by the DSD framework’s Scope of Student Autonomy. The self-assessment was administered twice in order to gauge whether students were more aware of digital skills, and whether their confidence and autonomy had increased as a result of the workshop and assignment experience.

Table 15.3 Skills self-assessment tool
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The workshop was delivered in a way that scaffolded students’ understanding of what digital skills entail so that they could identify the digital skills they needed to develop related to the assignment they would have to complete as part of this course.

To achieve this, we took an active learning approach using discovery learning techniques. A range of hands-on stimulus activities were created by the library’s team of learning skills advisers and librarians that required students to reflect on the digital skills they were expected to develop. The workshop began with students being asked to draw a picture of a ‘digitally savvy student’ on a piece of butcher’s paper. This gave students an opportunity to reflect on the aptitudes, dispositions and skills that would be demonstrated by a digitally competent learner. Pictures included devices such as laptops and mobile phones, but also depicted abstract concepts like ‘connectedness’ and ‘problem-solving’. One group of students depicted the digitally savvy student as being so integrated with technology that they virtually become one with their mobile phone (Fig. 15.2). An interesting image to contemplate! This was followed by activities designed to unpack the concept of ‘digital skills’ and present them as a range of cognitive and metacognitive capabilities. For instance, we asked students to consider the skills and dispositions required for identifying false news (i.e. a hoax email) and instructed them to write these down on sticky notes. The skills elicited on the sticky notes (such as questioning, referencing prior knowledge, evaluating credibility) were then matched against the skills described in the framework. In this way, students began to see everyday skills and abilities as skills required for digital learning and for functioning in a digital environment. We have found in previous workshops that these types of ‘stimulus activities’ help learners to unpack or ‘deconstruct’ the MELT frameworks quickly which leads to a deeper understanding of the skills we are asking them to develop. As Willison and O’Regan (2007) point out, in relation to research skills, being explicit about skill development is a key to skill acquisition. Furthermore, these activities also helped students to begin to understand the terminology used in the framework.

Fig. 15.2
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‘The digitally savvy student’

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The workshop also asked students to focus on the assessment task for this course, which required them to prepare a group presentation on a seminal moment in their field, i.e. the discovery of bacteria in science. Students were asked to consider how they would communicate, plan, prepare and create a group response to the task, including where to find and how to use academic literature to support their presentation. Throughout this unpacking of the concept of ‘digital skills’, students began to see that a seemingly common assignment task actually encompassed and required a range of digital skills from time management and working as a team online, to finding information in databases and sharing it with peers digitally, to employing the use of presentation software (i.e. Powerpoint or Prezi) to create a presentation. It was important as facilitators that we drew students’ attention to suitable digital tools (i.e. Google docs, Zoom conferencing), and protocols for working as a group online and how these activities related to digital skills and practices. The result was a workshop where students engaged with the DSD framework through a series of interactive activities. The students then mapped the skills they identified in the assignment task (and wrote on sticky notes) to the facets of the DSD framework that were captured on flashcards (Fig. 15.3). In Fig. 15.3, the yellow flashcards show the facet taken from the DSD and the blue cards show skill statements aligned to the skill descriptor (i.e. ‘I am able to choose the appropriate digital technology for my needs’ and ‘I am able to reflect on my learning to improve my digital skills’). We purposefully used language in our teaching informed by the DSD framework that made digital skills explicit to students as a way to highlight that these skills were important. That becoming both cognisant of these skills and applying them would make an impact upon their grades and skill development.

Fig. 15.3
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Photo of a group’s work matching sticky notes to flashcards

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6 Outcomes

In order to determine the impact of introducing students to digital skills as a set of unique capabilities that inform all areas of learning, data was collected from students at four points during the semester: Early in semester when students attended the 2-hour library workshop and were asked to complete the online skills self-assessment (n = 67) and again after completing the group assignment in Week 7, when students were asked to retake the self-assessment (n = 37). Students were also asked to write a short reflection about the development of their digital skills and to interview one another about whether their digital skills had developed since the beginning of semester. These results were recorded and analysed to ascertain the effectiveness of using the DSD framework for digital skill development and future curriculum planning.

6.1 Student Awareness of Digital Skill Development

To measure the effectiveness of making students aware of digital skills, the results of the skills self-assessment, student reflection and interviews were analysed. In the data, we were looking for reference to digital skills as described in the DSD. Many students made comments that suggested they were thinking more broadly about what capabilities digital skills encompass and could see that skills such as Organise and Manage and Collaborate and Communicate were, in fact, essential skills for learning in a digital environment. These comments are typical of student responses, ‘I know more about organising everyone and the ways you can do that with technology’ and ‘I’ve improved in terms of managing digitised content and resources’. This awareness was also reflected in the results of the skills self-assessment, particularly the second time students rated their skills in Week 7 of semester (see Appendix), where 86% responded to the prompt, ‘I can manage myself and others in an online environment’ (item 13) with either ‘a little guidance’ or ‘no guidance from others’ (i.e. high confidence/autonomy). Students also commented on the way the workshops had helped them develop a greater awareness of the suite of digital tools available, ‘I didn’t know how to use Google Docs or Google Slides, I didn’t know they existed, … so like that’s really cool cause group assignments are going to be way easier now’. As well as understanding the advantages of using digital technologies for group work, students indicated through the interviews an improved ability to collaborate and co-create in an online environment and even customise the tools to suit themselves and their group. One student summed this up well with, ‘[it’s easier now] to organise other people and find how to work together more effectively, through better communication through IT, especially Google docs, Google slides. Organising everyone and the ways you can do that’.

Students also felt that increasing their awareness of digital skills prepared them better for the assignment because it made them more aware of the importance of digital skills. As one student put it,

The only thing that really has developed is my awareness of the amount of ways you can do a group assignment through technology, that there are more convenient ways to do it rather than just meeting up in person and speaking about it, that there are ways that you can do it through technology that make the whole process way smoother. (Science student)

Not all students, however, reported an improvement in their awareness or understanding of what ‘digital skills’ entail. These comments show that for some students with self-identified low autonomy, further development is required:

I’m still vague as to what a digital skill is… (Science student)

No, because I’m horrible with technology and I’ll never improve no matter how hard I try. But I appreciate them trying. (Education student)

No, I struggle with Word, so it’s not going to change. I can’t do PowerPoint so I did the Google docs PowerPoint because I didn’t know how to do the normal one. (Nursing student)

In one instance, even a student with self-perceived high autonomy did not feel the workshop developed their digital skills much,

I don’t think [my digital skills] have improved an overly large amount, I’ve always been around technology my entire life so it’s not a foreign concept to be working with a computer all the time, so for the most part my digital skills haven’t changed. (Science student)

Nevertheless, the skills self-assessment revealed that most students felt more confident about their digital skills by mid-semester (Week 7) when they were asked to re-do the self-assessment (see Appendix). In particular, the following responses are telling; in response to the prompt, ‘I am able to identify my purpose for using technology’ (item 1), 89% of students responded ‘with a little guidance’ or ‘with no guidance’ (i.e. high confidence/autonomy), up 24% from Week 1. Likewise, when responding to the prompt, ‘I have the confidence to explore the functionality of a range of digital technology’ (item 3), responses jumped from 52% confidence the first time students responded to the self-assessment to 83% confidence by Week 7. This rise in perceived confidence and autonomy was further reflected in the response to the prompt, ‘I am curious to explore how digital tools can meet my needs’ (item 4), which jumped from 59% to 75% and the prompt, ‘I am aware of e-protocols, my e-safety, digital wellbeing, profile and footprint’ (item 25), which likewise jumped 27 points from 59% to 86% by Week 7. The responses (see Appendix) show a consistent increase in confidence and autonomy as an overall trend.

It is interesting to compare this with areas students expressed high confidence and autonomy in the first time they completed the self-assessment, early in the semester. Perhaps not surprisingly, two areas in which students expressed high confidence and autonomy when first responding to the self-assessment were item 22 ‘I am able to participate in online environments’ (84.5%) and item 23 ‘I am able to share in online environments’ (76%) (see Appendix). Nevertheless, even here students expressed greater confidence in response to these prompts the second time they were asked to complete the self-assessment in Week 7, with 91% and 94% of students responding with high confidence/autonomy, respectively (see Appendix).

This pattern, reflecting a perceived increase in confidence and autonomy in Week 7 responses, is consistent across the cohort, despite the number of responses varying significantly at both intervals (67 vs. 37 responses). The only skill area where perceived confidence/autonomy dropped the second time around was in response to item 17, ‘I know when to disconnect from the digital environment’ (74% vs. 59%). It is not clear why students would express a decline in confidence in this area, but one could speculate that as confidence rose in relation to the online environment, the ability to disconnect became a challenge.

7 Reflection

Upon reflection, we realised that there were some improvements that could be made to our approach to digital skill development with this cohort. One of the biggest considerations was the prior learning and experience of technology use this student cohort brought with them and how these students described their current capabilities. We realised that when completing the skills self-assessment, students were answering the questions based on the digital environments they were familiar with, rather than considering new and unfamiliar technologies. In short, students do not know what they do not know. We think these quotes from students characterise this:

No, I have not improved, but it made me aware of what I do know – I haven’t ventured into things I haven’t done before. Just using PowerPoint, just basic. (Education student)

I’ve grown up with technology my whole life and I built a computer when I was eleven… [but] I’m definitely much better at finding things on the internet now, like much, much better. I didn’t really know about a lot of the search keys, like the asterisk which allows you to search for anything like the following suffix, very useful actually, very useful. (Science student)

In future iterations of the workshop, less common technologies will be used for exploration (i.e. robotics, augmented reality apps) to stretch students’ prior understanding of what digital skills encompass. To support students who do not have a workshop such as this embedded in their units, there has been discussion of how students could use the DSD framework to reflect on their autonomy with digital technologies, so that they can identify their weaknesses and seek help in targeted areas. This is where the skills self-assessment could become very valuable.

8 Conclusion

In conclusion, in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, teaching degrees require accreditation from national bodies that seek digital skills to be developed in graduates (AITSL, 2017). It is expected that academics could use the DSD framework to guide their curriculum to ensure that expectations of student digital literacy match graduate ability. Where specialised digital tools are used, the DSD framework has the potential to inform how much guidance students might require from educators to become more independent using these tools. In our experience, the framework has also helped underpin library–faculty collaboration to address the challenge of making explicit the ‘incremental development of digital skills and practices for collaborating, learning, researching, working, and functioning in society’ (Torres et al., 2017). For library teaching staff, the DSD framework signals a range of potential applications, including but not limited to helping students understand where their digital skills lie in comparison to the expectations of their assignment requirements.