Digital Literacy Inequities, Higher Education, and the New Digital Divide

Abstract

At the onset of the Information Age, there was a period of exponential, technological growth. Popular games and social networking became norms in daily society. This constant access to stimulation had students of all ages tuning out in classes that were taught though traditional methods. The incorporation of technology into daily learning became a necessity to keep students at all levels of learning engaged. During this time, it was hypothesized that digital literacy skills would be acquired naturally through emersion just as oral and written literacy develop, thus the assumption was that children born into and raised during the information age would be proficient in the new literacies. Recent research reveals that this was not the case. While digital lifestyle skills did develop out of interest of the user, digital workplace skills have not followed suit. A digital divide first emerged between the two, creating a barrier in education due to the inability of many students, faculty, and staff to efficiently find, evaluate, create, and communicate information for learning and in their professions. Two decades later a second divide is emerging, a new digital divide, between those with access to information and communication technology (ICT) and those who have been historically marginalized with inequitable access. This paper will explore digital literacy in the disaggregate and how this phenomenon affects higher education and society as a whole. Implications and recommendations for higher education setting will be discussed.