Digital Literacy Skills Framework in Australia – Key Features

Key Features of the Digital Literacy Skills Framework

The Digital Literacy Skills Framework describes the core skill across three interactive dimensions:

• four levels of performance: Pre Level 1 Stage A and Stage B; Level 1; Level 2; Level 3
• four Performance Variables that may influence a person’s performance at any time: Support, Context, Text complexity and Task complexity (see Table 1)
• three Domains of Communication, broad contexts within which the core skill may be used: Personal and community; Workplace and employment; Education and training.

Guiding Principles

As with the ACSF, the development of this Digital Literacy Skills Framework has been informed by the following principles:

• the core skill of digital literacy can be seen as a discrete skill; however, its interrelationships with the other ACSF core skills are also critical
• the core skill of digital literacy is contextualised; each context in which individuals operate has its own core skills requirements, expectations and rules which need to be learned

• an individual’s performance at any time will be influenced by the interplay of a number of performance variables
• the Digital Literacy Skills Framework reflects contemporary use of English in Australia.

Four Performance Variables

As with the ACSF, a key feature of the Digital Literacy Skills Framework is the recognition of four factors that may influence performance at any point in time:
• The nature and degree of support
• Familiarity of context
• Complexity of text
• Complexity of task.
Refer to Table 1: Performance Variables Grid (PVG).

The Performance Variables Grid and Digital Literacy
The interaction of the four variables is very important. In the digital literacy framework one important interplay is between the two variables of familiarity of context and task complexity. Consider the example of mobile phones that are so familiar now to most adults. What might be a three or four step process, e.g. make a call on a mobile phone or send a simple SMS response, can actually be accomplished at PLB or Level 1.

Users should note that some Sample Activities listed at lower levels in the Domains of Communication may appear more complex than the task complexity outlined in the Performance Variables Grid for that level. This is because of the high level of familiarity of the task.

Indicators

In the ACSF, the Indicators are statements that briefly describe performance at each level of the core skill. The digital literacy indicators are numbered .12 and .13:
• Indicator .12 Active awareness of self as a digital user
• Indicator .13 Knowledge, use and application of digital literacy skills.

This numbering system allows the Digital Literacy Skills Framework to integrate with the indicator numbering system in the ACSF (see Table 2). The indicators are numbered using a decimal system in which the whole number refers to the level and the decimal component refers to the indicator. For example, someone who has demonstrated performance at level one in digital literacy will have achieved both 1.12 and 1.13. The following table notes the broad indicator statements for each skill, with digital literacy included.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @ Digital Literacy Skills Framework | Department of Education, Skills and Employment – Document library, Australian Government