Digital Literacy Narrative S26

Guidelines for the Assignment:

The Digital Literacy Narrative is a progressive assignment in three steps, which will be completed over the course of the semester, as well as being graded twice. This first stage is setting up the assignment and making sure that you have GitHub Education set up and are able to prompt and generate a few answers. It is ungraded.

Setting up the page: Once you have VSCode set up and GitHub Education access to CoPilot, you will be able to generate some sample documents using agent mode. Create a new textfile in your pages folder and name it dln.md. Use the yaml header in scheduleS26.md for the top of the page. Save and commit and make sure you can see this on your page at {yourusername}.github.io/dln.html. You will have to add a new tab to the element of the code which controls navigation on the site so that your DLN can be reach from the header.

___
title: "Schedule S26"
permalink: /schedule/
author_profile: false
___

Then using the following prompt with three different models (e.g. Gemini, Claude, GPT) to generate the text, appending them to the same file and labelling the parts as to the model they come from.

The Prompt:

Please write a 750 word reflection on digital literacy from the perspective of a 20 year old university student majoring in {fill in your majors/minors or choose a random subject} and append it to this markdown file. Include strategies they might already know how to employ in their daily and academic lives for content creation, social interaction, as well as any platforms or software they use for research data management as well as data manipulation and analysis. Consider the different skill set in the room given all the interdisciplinary majors (in different fields such as Computer Science, Interactive Media, Film and New Media, even Environmental Studies, Engineering, Literature or Creative Writing). Reflect on how digital humanities might offer new horizons on what they are studying, how collaboration might offer new avenues for developing their “computational thinking” and how they can learn about new ways of approaching data and the world of AI. Offer critical reflection on your current abilities, what you are what you are discovering in the course as well as what kinds of new ways of thinking you would like to explore.

This .md file as a page is the starting point for the rest of the semester. Starting with these responses as a page, you will complete the following 3 steps over the course of the semester.

Step 1 Due date: 3 February 2026, ungraded. The following two revisions will count 5% each toward the total of 10% for this stepwise assignment.

Hints for Step 1:

• it is possible, but not required, to reshape the prompt to reflect your specific perspective and to generate a different starting point. In this case, indicate that you have done this, include what the various models provided and then revise.
• Rewrite a very small handful of details in the file to reflect the kind of digital literacies you feel that you have and that you want to work on this semester.
• Adjust the perspective to be your own.
• Don’t extend any of the responses much beyond 750 words.
• Use a markdown cheatsheet such as this one to stylize your post, adding different layout features and embedded links if needed.
• After your get the three sample texts, write a small paragraph (150 words or so) comparing them and what they tell us about how models respond to prompting on this subject.
• You do not need to refer to the readings at this point, but you might be interested in the recent article “The Role of Culture in the Intelligence of AI”.
• Feel free to use multiple commits and commit messages explaining the kinds of changes you made.

Step 2: Just before midterm, you will combine these posts into one single one in the same file to reflect your current state of thinking on the question. As you are editing and changing, use commit messages to indicate what you are changing. Commit after a major bit of rewriting, not with every word! You should increase the word limit to about 1000-1250 words. For this part of the assignment you do not have to use agent mode, but can to check for clarity, expression, transitions. A rubric for how you can revise it will be provided. Make reference to an additional two resources from the course.

Step 2 Due date: TBA, 5% total grade.

Hints for Step 2:

• Make the language your own, by rewriting whole sentences rather than just changing some concepts or clauses.
• Think about the claims made by the various models, their clarity, accuracy and relevance and consider rewriting or adding additional information.
• Add new material you have learned from the class as well as new terminology.
• Make reference to two of the readings/resources in class which we have had which discuss the points you bring up, linking outward to them on the web or in the library catalog using their permalinks.

Step 3: At the end of the term, you will rewrite the post to reflect your end-of-term state of thinking about digital literacies. You should increase the word limit to 1500-1750 words. You can go beyond that, but remember few people want to read more than 1500-2000 words. Make reference to an additional two resources from the course (4 total).

Step 3 Due date: TBA, 5% total grade.

Guiding questions for step 3:

• What are the platforms you might use now? for what?
• How have you realized some of these platforms affordance and limitations?
• What were you good at in digital environments? What are the most significant new points you learned?
• What can you still use some improvement in?
• What are you learning about new domains of thinking about data?
• How do you feel with working and learning with AI?
• Is AI getting better at writing? or not?