Access Conference

Depth of Field: Combining Conceptual and Technical Knowledge in Media Digital Literacy
 Does understanding the manual mode on a camera help you take better photos? Can being able to clip videos make you capable of producing impactful videos? At the Digital Scholarship Centre (DSC) at the University of Alberta, as digital literacy instructors, we provide service at the point of need when skills or software learning is required. In these interventions, we often find ourselves navigating expectations to ‘just teach me the tool’ when experience proves media production is not just a technical exercise.
Research communication is rarely connected to digital scholarship, yet it is in this final phase of the research cycle that digital technologies are increasingly being embraced. With the proliferation of social media, tools, misinformation, and now the adoption of generative AI, navigating knowledge translation is complex. Nevertheless, a pervading perception among academics remains that media creation skills are easy to master.
At the DSC “…we contend that technologies are never neutral and not merely tools but are themselves created within oppressive systems and thus embody the very same assumptions about the world that they try to critique” (Zvyagintseva, Cawthorn & Quamen, 2023). In communications particularly, understanding visual communication, rhetorical devices, ideating meaning, storytelling and metaphor become critical in achieving desired goals.
As many libraries offer digital literacy training, this presentation will engage participants in a conversation about how deep technology training must be, to be effective. It will overview the development of a workshop series for research communications that use conceptual and technical teaching to allow learners to achieve comprehensive media skills. The presentation will share examples and offer future directions we envision for the series.
Zvyagintseva, L., Cawthorn, K., & Quamen, H. (2023). Digital Literacy as a Theory of Power: Critical Pedagogy in a Library Digital Scholarship Centre. IDEAH. https://doi.org/10.21428/f1f23564.ded41de0