Digital do
So, digital literacy is a given, but can be improved. Sadly there is no wikidigimed…and this may be the fault of poor quality control of content production, storage and interpretation; if being a healthcare professional was easy, everyone would do it, right? Digital professionalism is another beast altogether: how to be professional in a digital society. As professor Ellaway says, digital professionalism is still professionalism. Proficient digital literacy is a prerequisite; to navigate the rapids one should at least have a boat and a decent paddle. Who should teach it, and when? All of us! A societal responsibility to keep them responsible from young-uns and up. Oh dear, being dragged kicking and screaming…
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An interesting insight we might draw out here is that people with little skill or experience in digital technology might still have valuable things to contribute to a digital literacy agenda? Of course, it wouldn’t work if nobody understood how any of the tech worked, but it does seem reasonable that a range of perspectives, experiences and forms of knowledge are needed for a responsible kind of literacy to emerge?
Does it become any easier if we begin to think of digital professionalism as those areas of our professionalism that are implicated in digital technology, culture and/or innovation?
I don’t think anybody would consider that it would have to be a mono dimensional facet to ones profile. As Tim observes, a range of perspectives and engagements are required to maintain a full sense of the subject. Certainly, the Association of Learning Technologists maintain a membership policy that welcomes teachers and administrators as much as technical developers.
As to the issue of who should teach it – you are right that we ALL should have some kind of moral or ethical responsibility to recognise and uphold good values, digital or otherwise – but that is not always explicitly teaching, of course. When I was more directly engaged with undergraduate teaching, I was responsible for the curricular theme of medical informatics. Very little was itemised in the GMC’s Tomorrows Doctors guidelines around which all UK schools base their curricula. Consequently, it was a struggle to fit everything in. BUT I made sure that the emphasis of the theme changed from ensuring students knew how to open a spreadsheet and send an email to begin to create an awareness of the life and movements of data, the nature of the digital footprint, the ethical dimensions of information in digital media, the complexities of informed consent, the vulnerability of the archive – the foundations of a sense of digital professionalism. So it can be done, the process can – and probably should – begin early. The more challenging aspect to this, in my opinion – and it is just an opinion – is nurturing the older, more senior professionals who have to more proactively struggle to get a toe hold on this and implement policy to accord space and time to the development of this aspect of professionalism.