Teaching Students about Their Digital Footprints | Teaching and Learning - Faculty Focus

This article first appeared on Faculty Focus on September 19, 2016. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

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Dawn McGuckin, professor at Durham College (Canada) observes, Our students live in an online world. They’re emotionally and physically attached to their devices and many of their relationships exist within technology. 

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As educators, there are many ways that we have had to adapt to this changing landscape of communication within our teaching, and when I look around my institution, I think we’re doing a remarkable job at keeping up with the rapid pace of change.

However, one area that doesn’t get the attention it deserves is educating students on the digital footprints they leave behind. Footprints that can jeopardize their employment potential. A large part of our job as college educators is to ensure that our students have the skills to become contributing members of society working in their chosen fields. We give them content knowledge and skills and we may even impart some of our worldly knowledge, but we rarely think about their online activities and the long-term ramifications they can have on their ability to achieve these goals.

I have presented on this topic on several occasions throughout North America and I am always surprised by how little some post-secondary educators know about the functionality and privacy of certain social media platforms...

Below I describe several steps for creating a lesson plan that will aid in making the Internet a constructive tool for building a positive, online identity for our students.
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Source: Faculty Focus