eCitizen Education 360 (2022) Project - Bulletin 2: New Insights on Key Factors Impacting Students’ Wellbeing and Schools’ Online Teaching and Calls for Collaboration to Establish a Digital New Normal.

eCitizen Education 360 (2022) Project - Bulletin 1: Cumulative Impact Under New Normal Insights for Positive Actions

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019, face-to-face lessons in classrooms have been supplanted by long periods of home-based online lessons in Hong Kong schools. During this challenging period of time, many schools, families, and students have struggled to cope with this New Normal of teaching and learning. Understandably, there are widespread concerns in Hong Kong society that student learning and wellbeing may have been adversely affected. It is therefore imperative to take stock of the impact of the New Normal on students’ learning and wellbeing.

Catherine KK Chan / Cheng Yong Tan / Min Lan / Nancy Wai Ying Law / Qianqian Pan / Qianru Liang / Sisi Tao / Wenhui Li / Yimeng Li

Reorienting the assessment of digital literacy in the twenty-first century: a product-lifecycle and experience dependence perspective

This article examines a critical issue in digital literacy assessment design when technological changes are happening with escalating speed in our society. There have been many assessment studies of digital literacy (DL) for diverse purposes and across different geographic and socioeconomic (geo-socioeconomic) contexts. While the assessment framework, instrument design, and technology platforms used for conducting these assessments differ, what remains common is the lack of explicit discussion about the possible role of the technology used and item design in affecting the measure DL. There is an apparent, implicit assumption that DL assessment is similar to the assessment of other academic achievements such as reading literacy and numeracy, which should ideally be measured independent of the specific technologies or task contexts adopted in the assessment. Recent evidence from a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) commissioned study on a Digital Literacy Global Framework (DLGF) shows that the DL needed to accomplish the same task is heavily dependent on the devices and tools used under different the geo-socioeconomic contexts (Law et al. in A global framework of reference on digital literacy skills for indicator 4.4.2, 2018). Drawing on the DLGF findings and a critical examination of the assessment designs in large-scale international assessment tests, this paper puts forward a product-lifecycle and experience dependence (PLED) perspective to guide the design and interpretation of DL assessment.

Frank Reichert / Gary Ka Wai Wong / Nancy Wai Ying Law