Students around table

Digital/AI Fluency

Author: Dr Tunde Varga-Atkins & Lisa Hawksworth

Digitally and AI fluent graduates can think critically and make balanced, ethically informed judgements about the information they generate, find and use. They can effectively utilise digital/AI platforms to connect, collaborate, and communicate in academic and professional contexts and as citizens. Whilst maintaining a critical perspective, digitally fluent graduates are open to continuously developing digital and AI-enabled practices and artefacts in their specialist subject areas and organisational settings. They skillfully manage their digital identity across multiple platforms in a professional and responsible manner.

Educational benefits

Developing the digital and AI fluency of your students can help you to:

  • Enable your students to live, learn, work and succeed and empower them as citizens who can reach and express informed views and engage fully in a digital society (Jisc, 2025).
  • Develop your students’ critical thinking and ethical awareness by requiring them to make creative and critical use of digital/AI platforms, including assessing reliability, bias and sustainability impacts.
  • Deepen your students’ understanding by asking them to articulate their learning in different multimodal formats (e.g. text, images, podcasts, video etc.).
  • Increase your students’ confidence and flexibility, and transform their approach to learning by enabling safe experimentation with emerging technologies in collaborative environments (Jeffrey et al. 2011).
  • Prepare your students to adopt technologies in their professional and personal lives by exposing them to your subject’s varied digital, data, and AI-enabled practices.
  • Support equitable access and inclusive participation by embedding accessibility and universal design principles in digital and AI-enhanced learning experiences.

Considerations for your programme team

  • What does digital and AI fluency mean in your subject area? How could this be reflected in programme and module learning outcomes?
  • What are the digital practices and preferences of your students? How can these be supported inclusively, ensuring accessibility and equity?

Taking into account that you might be doing some/all of these already:

  • How can you progressively build students’ digital and AI capabilities across the programme (e.g. information, data and media literacy, critical AI literacy, multimodal communication, collaboration, problem solving, and digital wellbeing & identity)?
  • How will students recognise, articulate, and record the digital and AI capabilities they are developing (e.g. through reflective logs, digital portfolios, or assessment criteria)? How might you make use of the JISC Discovery Tool to encourage students to reflect on their digital and AI capabilities?
  • How can you ensure ethical, responsible and sustainable use of information, data, digital and AI tools is embedded into your discipline’s practice?
  • How can your students get the most out of our digital resources and opportunities to utilise digital technologies such as augmented reality, simulation, virtual reality and AI where appropriate, to enhance students’ educational experience? How might you incorporate use of/encourage students to use the MakerSpace facility in the Sydney Jones Library? Can you create activities which require your students to use or create LinkedIn Learning playlists?
  • How will you integrate the required institutional programmes:
    • the introductory AI literacy module (pre-assessment/on-entry)
    • the universal digital literacies programme delivered through KnowHow?

In practice

Some ideas could include:

  • Set tasks that require students to critically evaluate and compare digital and multimodal information from human and AI-generated sources from a range of academic, professional and industry information sources, developing skills in verification, referencing, and ethical use.
  • Require students to use generative AI tools to draft, brainstorm, or simulate outputs, followed by critical reflection on accuracy, bias, ethics, and sustainability. “Check relevant and available KnowHow tutorials (e.g. thinking critically when using GAI) to support this kind of activity.”
  • Challenge students to problem-solve and collaborate using digital and AI-supported tools (shared documents, data visualisation, project management software). “Are there LinkedIn Learning resources to help students learn how to utilise these tools?”
  • Include tasks that develop responsible data handling and digital security practices (e.g. anonymising datasets, complying with GDPR, managing AI prompts and outputs ethically). “Check out the range of KnowHow tutorials that could support learning in this area (e.g. developing effective prompts).”
  • Get your students to present their findings in a range of digital and multimodal formats for defined audiences and purposes (reports, podcasts, social media posts, video, etc.), supported by AI tools where relevant.
  • Encourage students to use digital/AI productivity and learning tools (e.g. citation managers, text-to-speech, generative note-making, mind-mapping, accessibility apps such as Sensus Access to help convert documents into a range of accessible formats) to support their learning and track their progress (reflective logs, etc.). Self-led support on using EndNote to manage citations is available. Students can also add completed LinkedIn Learning tutorials to their LinkedIn profile to showcase skills to employers.
  • Demonstrate to your students the advantages and pitfalls of social media for following your subject’s developments and participation in online professional networks safely, ethically and with respect.
  • Ask your students to reflect on how they manage their own and others’ online professional identities and their digital wellbeing (i.e. the impact of using digital/AI technologies on them as a person. “The JISC Discovery tool, based on the JSIC Digital Capabilities Framework, includes digital identity and wellbeing. This can be a useful way to introduce the topic and encourage students to reflect on their own experiences of digital wellbeing.”
  • Get students to critically reflect on and evaluate their use of digital/AI technologies and resources in specific tasks. “The JISC Discovery tool can be a way to encourage students to reflect on their skill levels and identify areas for improvement in a supportive way. Similarly, please check relevant KnowHow tutorials and how you can utilise them in your teaching (e.g. Thinking critically when using GAI).”
  • Integrate discussions of the ethics, inclusivity and sustainability of digital and AI applications (e.g. human, environmental, knowledge and future employment costs).
  • Link explicitly to KnowHow workshops and tutorials, and the introductory AI literacy module, embedding these as part of induction and progression points.
  • Map digital/AI activities to programme learning outcomes and assessment rubrics, making clear where students are expected to demonstrate digital and AI fluency. “Check available KnowHow resources to scaffold learning appropriately.”
  • Design activities that use immersive technologies (VR, AR, simulation) where appropriate to extend disciplinary learning beyond traditional environments. “Consider how you might utilise the equipment and facilities available in the MakerSpace in the Sydney Jones Library, for example VR, podcasting and 3D printing.”

Further resources

Strategy

Our students must be digitally fluent to ensure they are equipped with the skills they will need in their future careers. The rapid pace of technological development provides new opportunities to transform disciplines, learning and teaching approaches and the way we live. In such an environment it is important that as an institution we keep pace with future-facing technological advancements (both generic and disciplinary specific) and where appropriate ensure these are integrated into our curricula. In addition to ensuring our students benefit from technological innovations, it is important that we provide equitable and accessible digital and online experiences for all students, and promote ethical, responsible and sustainable use of digital and AI technologies within the University.

Revised and updated by Dr Tünde Varga-Atkins, CIE and Lisa Hawksworth, Library.

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Creative Commons Licence
Digital/AI Fluency by Dr Tunde Varga-Atkins & Lisa Hawksworth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.