New Literacy Instruction Strategies Considering Higher Education Hybridization

Introduction

Today’s higher education landscape is strongly directed toward digitalization, a process accelerated as well by the medical crises during COVID-19. Digital technologies changed the learning environment, the way knowledge is conveyed, transferred and built up, as well as the way information is created, stored and distributed. The evolving technology changed as well the way we understand literacy and challenged the way literacy is conceived. Literacy evolution has been shaped by social and cultural transformations and has recently been intensively changed by technology. The aim of this chapter is to conduct a literature review on literacy strategies useful in higher education, to help students who are struggling in their learning process because if not addressed appropriately, academic burden and increased pressure can result in significant stress that might affect performance.

Literacy in higher education will require complex skills to understand and use the information in academic texts, to summarize, to understand abstract and complex concepts, to finish and hand in on time academic assignments, to be able to identify appropriate references, to navigate through the database of articles, etc. All skills are essential for academic success and performance, for effective and successful learning. Literacy is sometimes taken for granted by university teachers, most of the time, students are expected to have already acquired the functional and digital literacy, which is not always applicable since even digital natives “don’t necessarily have the skills, the competency, or the natural fluency that they are assumed to possess” (Thomas, 2011). Surprisingly or not, students are not very creative and innovative, but rather stereotypical ways of communicating and information retrieval (Thomas, 2011). Therefore, improving literacy even for students in higher education has been of interest to researchers mostly because of the independent learning required at this level. In today’s technologically driven, knowledge-based culture, young people need to be expert readers, writers, and thinkers to contend, compete, and succeed in the global economy.

Teaching foundational literacy skills is crucial to a longstanding professional growth, to lifelong learning and success. Nonetheless, many countries struggle with difficulties in developing strong literacy skills for their students. Moreover, an investment in literacy education is a priority for almost all educational systems world-wide (Biancarose & Snow, 2004). In this chapter, we will focus on the literacy skills needed for good navigation through higher education, what it means to be literate in higher education, and how we can empower students with the necessary skills to face academic learning required during university studies. It might be surprising, but university students might struggle in their learning process during higher education, as training at the university level requires profound reading skills, critical and creative thinking, developing research skills, producing academic and scientific reports (Păişi-Lăzărescu et al., 2018).