After three years of research and development for Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project, EMDD Director Dr. Jennifer Palilonis led a presentation in October at the World Conference on E-Learning. The presentation focused on the first round of research results on the usability, user experience, concept design, and content for a new and improved Professor Garfield website. Co-authored with EMDD graduate Tiffany Watt, the paper titled “Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project: Supporting K-5 Teachers in the Digital Literacy Instructional Efforts” introduces a novel digital literacy instructional website that leverages the popularity of one of the world’s most well-known and beloved cartoon characters to deliver an age-appropriate, standards-based, cross-curricular digital literacy curriculum.

The Professor Garfield website is scalable, providing opportunities for EMDD students, and ultimately, for teachers across the country to contribute new digital literacy exercises and lessons that can be integrated into this framework. Professor Garfield’s 21st Century Digital Literacy Project is the result of a partnership between the Center for EMDD, the Professor Garfield Foundation and Garfield creator Jim Davis to develop a comprehensive online curriculum that supports K-5 teachers and students in their digital literacy teaching and learning.

In Spring of 2018, the EMDD team completed a beta version of the Professor Garfield website, the latest step toward the ultimate goal for this project: to become a world leader in digital literacy education.

To develop the format and content for the Professor Garfield’s digital literacy curriculum, Dr. Palilonis led a team of EMDD graduate students in an extensive research phase in which students explored preeminent literature on digital literacy pedagogy, state-of-the-art technology in digital literacy instruction, and conducted empathy research with K-5 teachers at Burris Laboratory School and three Chicago Public Schools. They also engaged in a series of collaborative brainstorming sessions with elementary education pre-service teachers at Ball State. Through these sessions, the team identified and designed a number of digital literacy activities for grades K-5 intended to address core digital literacy skills and developed for cross-curricular format.

Research presented at the World Conference on E-Learning represents the first in a series of studies that aim to explore the efficacy of the Professor Garfield approach to digital literacy instruction. Dr. Palilonis is currently leading a research team that includes Burris Laboratory School teacher Stefanie Onieal that explores to what extent the Professor Garfield offerings improve students’ learning related to digital literacy. Dr. Palilonis’ EMDD research team is also exploring grants and other funding opportunities that will allow us to develop a sustainability plan for additional site development and maintenance.