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The 5 benefits of digital literacy in higher education.
When you foster creativity and teach digital skills to students across the curriculum, they learn how to think critically, solve problems creatively, and communicate their ideas in visually compelling ways. These essential skills help students succeed both in school and in their careers. Discover five key benefits of digital literacy for your students and your institution:
1. Digital literacy boosts student engagement.
When students use powerful creative tools like Adobe Express for Education and Adobe Creative Cloud to make things like posters, infographics, video essays, and interactive PDFs for class assignments, they engage more deeply with their coursework. That’s because multimodal digital communication fosters active learning and collaboration, and it inspires students to immerse themselves in their learning material and tap into their creative thought processes. At the same time, faculty can use Adobe to design visually interesting course materials, which helps drive student engagement as well.learn more on the blog.
“By introducing [Creative Cloud] tools to my students, not only do I get to empower them to tell their own stories, it’s actually made their research and their writing more meaningful to them. They research better and they write better, because they now have this purpose.”
-Dr. Eddie Webb, Director New Media Lab, Mesa Community College
2. Digital literacy improves academic performance.
According to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, the act of creating requires a higher order of thinking than other activities like remembering, understanding, and applying. When students use Adobe Express for Education and Creative Cloud to create presentations, infographics, animations, or podcasts for their assignments, they understand it more deeply and retain it longer. This enables them to communicate their ideas in more innovative ways—often exceeding expectations in classes across all disciplines.
In studies at University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and California State University, Fullerton, Civitas Learning found that building students’ digital literacy with Creative Cloud leads to quantifiable student outcomes across student segments. Key findings included:
Overall, UTSA students saw
+8%
higher course grades
New UTSA students saw
+16%
higher course grades
Rates of A/B grades increased
+8%
in Business Administration courses at CSUF
Rates of A/B grades increased
+15%
in Health Sciences courses at CSUF
3. Digital literacy helps students stand out in the job market.
Students who are proficient with digital tools like Adobe Express for Education and Creative Cloud can more easily differentiate themselves during the job application process. They can create media-rich resumes and showcase their personal brands with digital portfolios of their student work. They can walk into interviews prepared to show examples of the digital communication skills companies expect, and they can demonstrate their ability to learn and apply new technology skills. Perhaps most importantly, they can prove that they’ve developed the creative mindset employers crave.
“Digital literacy is the currency of employment today. There are a lot of things you can do in college to give you a good foundation, but solid digital skills and being confident in a digital world are what will help students get their first job out of college.”
-Cory Stokes, Digital Learning Officer, University of Utah
See the portfolio of Valentina Arismendi, Education Curriculum Producer at Adobe and graduate of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Get insights on digital literacy from Vincent Fu, Adobe Digital Literacy Thought Leader and Emergency Medicine Resident at Loyola University Medical Center.
4. Digital literacy makes your school more competitive.
Today’s digital natives need to be content creators, not just content consumers. By providing Adobe Express for Education and Creative Cloud to all your students across the curriculum, you can differentiate your institution, ensure that all students are digitally literate, and recruit new students more successfully. For example, innovative schools like Arizona State University, Winston-Salem State University, Auburn University, and many others are making digital literacy and student access and equity a priority by becoming Adobe Creative Campuses.
“Innovation and creativity benefit every student. Our goal is to bring cross disciplinary collaboration and skills to all fields, from business to nursing to public policy. Adobe Creative Cloud will continue to play a role in helping us bring education into the future.”
-Andrew Ilnicki, Director of Digital Innovation, Virginia Commonwealth University da Vinci Center
5. Driving digital literacy in higher education is easier than you think.
Adobe makes it easy for faculty in any discipline to incorporate Adobe Express for Education and Creative Cloud into their curricula. Faculty can find everything from simple learning modules to full professional development workshops on the Adobe Education Exchange.
They can also set up free Expert Services sessions to learn new app features and creative workflows from Adobe specialists. Plus, Adobe offers many resources designed to help students develop digital literacy, including a rich library of Creative Cloud tutorials as well as Adobe certification programs. Learn more about the benefits of Adobe in higher education.
“Adobe helped us run bootcamps for faculty members who were willing to become champions for the Adobe Creative Cloud apps—people who wanted to get started right away and inspire others to follow.”
-Bart Ganzert, Senior Faculty Development Specialist, Winston-Salem State University
