Measuring Effectiveness of
Digital Literacy Training for Teachers
By Devin Filip
The increasing presence of digital technology and tools in school systems and in daily life has brought on a need for teachers and students to fully understand how to safely and effectively utilize these technologies for educational purposes. This practice of safely and effectively using digital tools is one of the many varying definitions of digital literacy. Through research, I have come to think of digital literacy as a combination of technological knowledge, skills in using digital technology, the ability to adapt to new technologies, and practicing safe and respectful behaviors online.
My research showed that many published researchers understand and agree upon the need for digital literacy. The part that wasn’t unanimous in my research was how to best train people to improve their digital literacy skills. One method that was brought up and that stuck with me was the “train the trainer” method. This suggests that if teachers are provided training in digital literacy, they can then model what they’ve learned and pass on their digital literacy skills to their students. With that being the overall goal, I set out to develop a short professional development program to instruct teachers in digital literacy concepts.
For the research project, I developed a series of five audio podcasts on key subjects that affect teachers in my school district and planned to measure its effectiveness. I chose these subjects based on common issues and requests that we receive in the tech department. I asked 146 random teachers to participate in the study, and 24 of them agreed to participate. I split the participants into two groups of 12. The control group would simply take a 10-question assessment on digital literacy concepts, while the experimental group would first listen to the podcasts before taking the assessment. Care was taken to make sure that answers to these questions weren't blatantly given in the content of the podcasts, but rather that the podcasts conveyed a general idea or concept of digital literacy.
The results of the assessment showed that many teachers did well overall, but the experimental group had a notably higher mean score (8.75/10 for control vs. 9.70/10 for experimental). In order to determine significance of the digital literacy podcasts, a t-test of independent samples was conducted on the data. The results of the test showed that the podcasts were indeed significant (p = 0.0082, p < 0.05). This prompted me to reject the null hypothesis and accept the alternative hypothesis that the digital literacy podcasts were significant in performance on the digital literacy assessment.
One conclusion of this study was that the use of audio podcasts can be effective in providing professional development. It also shows that explaining certain tasks and digital processes to teachers can help to convey the digital literacy concepts behind them. It remains to be seen if this method can be successful when transferring this knowledge to students through modelling and instruction. However, one of the biggest suggestions I have for furthering or improving upon the research would be to follow up on teachers who participated and measure their students’ digital literacy levels
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