EDUCAUSE Review Articles and Information Literacy and Fluency

Web 2.0 is redefining what and how and with whom we learn. For example, in Wikipedia, “knowledge” is constructed by negotiating compromises among various points of view. This raises numerous questions: How do we in higher education help students understand the differences between facts, opinions, and values—and how do we help them appreciate the interrelationships that create “meaning”?

As the second decade of the public Internet reveals a desire for immediate access to greater certitude, CIOs and other campus leaders have an opportunity to rethink how questions find answers that are good enough or quick enough for the context of need.

Due to the fact that many campuses are not requiring information literacy and IT fluency skills as part of the curricula, the author advocates channeling the teaching of these skills through the notion that students are future content creators, in digitial enviroments.

The author discusses the problem of there being no "logical place in current curricular models or college/university faculty charts to locate core, nonspecialized coursework that unifies the acquisition of a basic new-literacy skill set".

The author asks the questions, what is it going to take to see new media, multimodal literacies, and curriculum and instructional change at colleges and universities?

Higher education institutions can take steps to embrace visual literacy within their core values and curricula to build visually dynamic communities.

Students appear to be highly technologically competent yet their information literacy skills are in question. College and university executives should consider how to equip their students with information literacy - not just IT skills - for a lifelong ability to evaluate and address information needs.

A new concept of effective communication is evolving. This new form of communication known as new media literacy incorporates visual, aural, and textual elements as well as a sense of immediacy. New media literacy is closely associated with Net Generation learners and is commonplace among higher education institutions.

Today's IT leaders can work as alchemists, bringing people, technologies, and learning content together to produce three types of true gold: twenty-first-century hybrid courses, learning spaces, and literacy.