A Practice-Based Approach to Developing First-Year Higher Education Students' Digital Literacy

Abstract

This paper contributes to the conceptualisation of digital literacy as a social practice. While previous studies have focused on student digital skills and digital practices in well-resourced environments, there is a research gap concerning digital literacy as a social practice in resource constrained environments, such as South African universities. A qualitative approach is used to explore the acquisition of discipline-specific digital literacy practices by a purposive sample of three first-year students from two extended degree programme courses. The findings reveal that the discipline-specific learning and assessment activities instantiated students' digital literacy practices in the technical, cognitive, and social-emotional dimensions. Furthermore, the participants acquired digital literacies in the technical and cognitive dimension. The research findings provide insight to how other higher education educators in developing contexts could integrate digital literacies into course curricula as a means of building students' capacity on discipline-specific digital literacies.