Presentation Title

Literacy in the 21st Century: Becoming digital producers

Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation (20 minute presentation)

Target Audience

Higher Education

Abstract

The humanities offer a unique space for connecting their core concepts centered on human engagement (critical thinking and empathy) to traditionally STEM concepts like coding. Further, “[t]he complementary relationship between computational thinking and media & information literacy…[will] allow students to both critically navigate and creatively produce digital content” (Gretter & Yadav, 2016).

For our purpose, we define coding as an instrumental practice that uses written steps to result in an executable program or snippet (for example, HTML, XML, CSS). Teaching coding is a way to operationalize critical thinking and make information literacy practices concrete by emphasizing information literacy’s broader themes through understanding how algorithms work, how evidence is compiled, and how choices are made. When students learn to code, they better understand persistence, problem solving, the importance of finding sufficient solutions (rather than searching for the only or “right” solution), as well as ways to locate and filter information (Dusenberry et. al, 2015).

These activities help students to better understand information literacies through lived experiences in the classroom. Through coding, students learn how to learn unfamiliar languages and technologies. They also research to find solutions and simultaneously consider how to negotiate a rhetorical context and user experience by considering the literacy practices and the code logic required to create that user experience. We argue that adding coding to humanities classrooms will expose students to different approaches for thinking critically and engage them in creative problem-solving strategies helping them become agents in their digital futures.

Bibliography

Dusenberry, L., Hutter, L., & Robinson, J. (2015). Filter. Remix. Make.: Cultivating Adaptability Through Multimodality. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 45(3), 299–322. http://doi.org/10.1177/0047281615578851

Gretter, S., & Yadav, A. (2016). Computational thinking and media & information literacy: An integrated approach to teaching twenty-first century skills. TechTrends, 60(5), 510-516.

McDaniel, R. (2015). Programming Perspectives in Texts and Technology: Teaching Computer Programming to Graduate Students in the Humanities. Programmatic Perspectives, 7(2), 213–229.

Presentation Description

The humanities’ offers a unique space for connecting their core concepts centered on human engagement (critical thinking and empathy) to traditionally STEM concepts like coding. Further, “[t]he complementary relationship between computational thinking and media & information literacy…[will] allow students to both critically navigate and creatively produce digital content” (Gretter & Yadav, 2016). We argue that adding coding to humanities classrooms will expose students to different approaches for thinking critically and engage them in creative problem-solving strategies supporting their information literacy, helping them become agents in their digital futures.

Keywords

computational literacy, coding, programming, critical thinking, problem solving, algorithms

Publication Type and Release Option

Event

Share

COinS
 

Literacy in the 21st Century: Becoming digital producers

The humanities offer a unique space for connecting their core concepts centered on human engagement (critical thinking and empathy) to traditionally STEM concepts like coding. Further, “[t]he complementary relationship between computational thinking and media & information literacy…[will] allow students to both critically navigate and creatively produce digital content” (Gretter & Yadav, 2016).

For our purpose, we define coding as an instrumental practice that uses written steps to result in an executable program or snippet (for example, HTML, XML, CSS). Teaching coding is a way to operationalize critical thinking and make information literacy practices concrete by emphasizing information literacy’s broader themes through understanding how algorithms work, how evidence is compiled, and how choices are made. When students learn to code, they better understand persistence, problem solving, the importance of finding sufficient solutions (rather than searching for the only or “right” solution), as well as ways to locate and filter information (Dusenberry et. al, 2015).

These activities help students to better understand information literacies through lived experiences in the classroom. Through coding, students learn how to learn unfamiliar languages and technologies. They also research to find solutions and simultaneously consider how to negotiate a rhetorical context and user experience by considering the literacy practices and the code logic required to create that user experience. We argue that adding coding to humanities classrooms will expose students to different approaches for thinking critically and engage them in creative problem-solving strategies helping them become agents in their digital futures.

Bibliography

Dusenberry, L., Hutter, L., & Robinson, J. (2015). Filter. Remix. Make.: Cultivating Adaptability Through Multimodality. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 45(3), 299–322. http://doi.org/10.1177/0047281615578851

Gretter, S., & Yadav, A. (2016). Computational thinking and media & information literacy: An integrated approach to teaching twenty-first century skills. TechTrends, 60(5), 510-516.

McDaniel, R. (2015). Programming Perspectives in Texts and Technology: Teaching Computer Programming to Graduate Students in the Humanities. Programmatic Perspectives, 7(2), 213–229.