Digital Assessment for All: Teaching Digital Literacies and Academic Literacies

This case study discusses the adoption of a whole-institution approach to the teaching of digital literacies and underlying academic literacies. Through reflection of over a decade of assessment at scale (ranging from 2,000 students per academic year in 2012 to over 18,000 students in academic year 2023–2024), the paper discusses the ways in which a large, research-intensive university has deployed digital assessment and digital pedagogy at scale. In particular, the case study focuses on two key areas of work, with the pedagogical bases and rationale considered at each stage. We discuss implementation of a digital literacies pedagogy that promotes early student engagement with enhancing their digital skills and capacities, through entirely digital course materials and online, digital assessment(s). Secondly, we frame all of our pedagogy above within the academic literacies framework (Wingate, 2006) that aims to empower students, build students’ capacity for critical engagement with digital pedagogy and assessment, and prepare our students for the twenty-first century digital world of work. We purposefully bring these two areas—digital literacies and academic literacies—together as one. Our chapter ends with discussion around challenges, key considerations, and some key recommendations based on our experience to date. We argue that academic literacies and digital literacies ought not to be treated as separate entities; rather, one promotes successful engagement with the other.