Date of Submission

8-10-2023

Document Type

OIP

Degree

Doctor of Education

Department

Education

Keywords

digital literacy, higher education, digital citizenship, foundations program, language literacy, critical thinking, Kotter.

Abstract

This Organizational Improvement Plan is an effort to address the lack of digital literacy learning at a Kuwaiti higher education institution. Digital literacy, and by extension, digital citizenship are critical skills to have in today’s world. Global College of Kuwait (GCK, anonymized) is a relatively new college in the region that is struggling to retain students, particularly after COVID highlighted the college’s lack of experience/preparedness with digital literacy. To tackle the problem, a reform committee was formed and tasked with finding a feasible solution to improve digital literacy learning in the college’s Foundation Program. A Foundation Program is a preparatory program typically found in most private GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) colleges and universities. It focuses on language and math literacy skills for new students and is a Pass/Fail program that is mandatory prior to entering a degree program. The OIP analyzes the best ways to implement digital literacy learning as part of the Foundations Program, ensuring all students engage in digital literacy knowledge and practice, and gain transferable academic skills of critical thinking for life. Using John Kotter’s (1996) eight steps for change, the analysis finds that there are best practices for digital literacy learning tailored to Foundation Programs and suggests GCK opt to implement the same. Following best practices at Khalifa University, GCK should imbed digital literacy tasks as part of the English language literacy portions of the Foundations Program.

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