The Concept of Digital Literacy from the Perspective of the Creative Multimedia Industry

Abstract

It is pertinent to develop digital literacy skills that enable the effective and efficient use of Information Technology applications to access and use the digital information needed for work tasks (Coiro, Knoble, Lank shear & Leu, 2008) to meet the current needs of the creative multimedia industry. Even when graduates have access to computers and the Internet and use these tools on a daily basis, they may not have the digital literacy to fulfil the requirements as needed by employers. This preliminary study seeks to identify the digital literacy requirement of the creative multimedia industry. This is a small scale study that employs the interview method to obtain information from five leaders, selected through purposive sampling, of the creative multimedia industry. Findings indicate three aspect of digital literacy, namely research competence, communication competence and social competence, are needed to prepare students for employment in creative multimedia industries.