A Focus on Technological Literacy in Higher Education

Summary Faculty members have found the importance of enabling students to study technological literacy at the university level. Technology can contribute to the education and literacy of university students. If one looks at the larger picture of education and the technological literacy of its students, isn’t this the mission that our profession has as design and technology educators? Expanding design and technology courses to the university general population can be used as numbers to support academic programs while also contributing to a wider student population. This helps us achieve technological literacy for all. Literacy is an important term when one judges the capabilities of people. Connotations of the term literacy reflect on citizen’s abilities to read, write, and use basic mathematics. Countries, where average adult literacy rates are low, are often referred to as developing countries. The levels of literacy are not equal around the globe. Often literacy is associated with a country’s ability to graduate its youth from high school. These rates are often important considerations when one applies for a position at a company in the developing and developed world, e.g., high school graduate, college graduate, master’s degree, etc. The U.S. Workforce Investment Act of 1998 defines literacy as "an individual's ability to read, write, speak in English, compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job, in the family of the individual and in society” (p. 131).