Report: Universities must do better with digital resources

A new study aims to shed light on lack of university-provided digital media resources; negligence of copyright compliance.

There is a major disconnect between student and faculty digital literacy perceptions, and institutions must provide better access to, and knowledge about, digital resources to improve learning outcomes. At least, that’s what new findings suggest.

As part of its inaugural 2016 State of Digital Media in Higher Education Report, digital media resource provider VideoBlocks gathered insights online in February this year from more than 300 current educators, students and administrators in higher education, and presented key findings on critical topics such as digital literacy, digital media usage and access, and copyright compliance. [More on methodology can be found in the report.]

With an exponential increase of digital media production and consumption in the past decade, it has become imperative that higher education institutions prepare their students to be digitally literate in order to help them meet the new standards of 21^st century careers and communication, argues the report.

Thus, it is important to establish how educators can best incorporate digital media resources and digital literacy competencies into their courses. The report urges universities to close this digital literacy gap by providing faculty with the proper digital media resources for achieving these goals.

“Digital media has become increasingly important in higher education, as digital literacy is a key skill for graduates entering the modern job market,” said VideoBlocks CEO TJ Leonard. “We wanted real, valid data, and we weren’t just looking for a marketing vehicle. This survey was a direct result of our experiences with a number of different universities, faculty and instructional devices. There was an anecdotal buy-in to digital media, but no hard data around it and a mismatch of perceptions. So we looked at a really wide swath of topics in order to establish a link between learning outcomes and digital media.”

(Next page: Key findings in digital literacy, usage and access, and copyright compliance)