Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

Faculty are often confronted by the ghosts of educators past. In the writing intensive courses I teach, those ghosts usually manifest in one phrase: “I’m a bad writer.” This embarrassed confession bespeaks an educational experience fraught with negative beliefs and expectations, not just about their writing but about their ability to succeed in general. The phrase becomes an inescapable prophecy lurking in every writing assignment prompt. “I know I’m not going to do well on this assignment,” they explain to themselves, “I’m just not a good writer.” They do not seek help, ask questions, organize their notes, or create outlines and rough drafts of their essays because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. And of course, because they do not do these vital steps in the writing process, they receive poor grades—and the prophecy is fulfilled.

Today’s best and brightest students can only be described as such because they believe in their own abilities; if they didn’t, they’d have fallen behind their peers long ago. In the same breath, struggling students rarely have as much confidence as their higher-achieving peers, which results in a vicious cycle of self-limitation. As educators, we... Read More