The pandemic has forced us to stay at home and spend more time on the Internet, be it for office work, online education or to connect with friends and families. So digital literacy is becoming increasingly significant to distinguish between fact and fiction. Digital literacy can be defined as an ever-expanding range of technical skills, abilities, and behaviours.
According to NSSO data, 23.4% of urban households and 4.4% of rural households own a computer. In fact, 42% of urban households and 14.9% of rural households with a computer have active Internet connections. As people are more digitally active around the country, it makes it all the more crucial to see how literate they are digitally and helps them evaluate the information online with the help of these resources.
How to promote digital literacy
Encouraging self-learning: Digital literacy cannot be taught through traditional means of learning. Exploring content by yourself will promote finding the authentic content that is lost behind misinformation. Self-learning also improves one’s evaluation skills, which is vital in the long run.
Creating an online resource guide: For online learners, it is important to differentiate between misinformation or opinion-based content and fact-based content. This will invigorate them to verify the information by going through numerous websites before they retain the information or share it with other people. So creating an online resource guide can help.
Digital analytics: This helps analyse the qualitative and quantitative data of a website and gives a clear vision to analyse how consumers are behaving on that particular website and target your content viewers based on certain characteristics. With digital analytics, companies also understand scope for improvements.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): An important tool that optimises a website’s content in a way that shows the website at the top of the search results. SEO mainly helps the searchers to identify the genuineness of every content.
Live events: Online events using a variety of tools and sites offer a chance to interact remotely with others, while webinars are a great way to spread awareness across age groups.
Creating an online digital assessment platform: Digital users need to test new technologies and get acquainted with Learning Management Systems. Digital users can learn to solve different problems using the LMS metrics, online assessment, and online surveys to bridge the knowledge and skill gaps of online resourcing.
Learner-generated e-learning content: Digital literacy can develop an online learner’s performance. Encouraging them to showcase their work by creating e-blogs and virtual presentations ta will compel them to research using online tools.
Digital literacy is rapidly becoming the fourth pillar of education. Recent times have shown us how essential the Internet has been as a source of information. So understanding fact-based information has become a vital task and not spreading panic by disseminating fake news is the need of the hour.
The writer is VP - Marketing, SRV Media, Pune
