On this episode of Status Go, we explore Franklin College’s Digital Fluency Initiative with Andrew Rosner, director of digital fluency. This campus-wide program is designed to equip students with the skills they need to succeed in today’s constantly evolving economy, with a focus on building expert-level skills and understanding. We hear about the newly created Data Science major, the Digital Fluency endorsement program, and how the initiative is reimagining classroom projects to incorporate digital elements. Andrew also who teaches a digital marketing Salesforce fundamentals course and incorporates Salesforce tools into the curriculum. Additionally, we learn about Franklin College’s innovative learning experience that sets them up for success in the long term, the importance of employer partnerships, and how companies are investing in technology to drive better yields. Tune in to hear about the resources available at the center for tech innovation. Digital fluency is a necessary skill for all employees, entrepreneurs, and citizens.
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About Andrew Rosner
Andrew Rosner is the Director of Digital Fluency at Franklin College. He is responsible for leading the implementation of the college’s strategic digital fluency initiative. Digital fluency is the aptitude to effectively and ethically interpret information, discover meaning, design content, construct knowledge, and communicate ideas in a digitally connected world. Franklin College is ramping up its efforts in digital fluency to better prepare its students for the workforce after graduation. His primary role is establishing connections to people, knowledge and experiences in digital fluency that will enhance the strong liberal arts education at Franklin and improve students’ digital fluency skills and career outcomes.
Episode Highlights:
[00:00:46]: Introduction and context
[00:02:57]: Andrew’s Career Journey
[00:06:04]: Digital fluency defined
[00:07:14]: Digital fluency vs. digital literacy
[00:08:35]: Why is this an important set of skills today?
[00:10:57]: 85% of jobs in 2030 don’t exist today
[00:11:34]: Digital fluency throughout all fields of study
[00:16:27]: Extracurriculars and co-curriculars
[00:20:04]: Future of the program
[00:22:08]: Chat GPT in the classroom
[00:25:52]: Five Core Digital Competencies
[00:28:21]: Corporate Partnerships
[00:32:54]: Call to Action
[00:34:43]: Thank you and close
Transcript
Jeff Ton [00:00:46]:
It’s been said that every company is a digital company. Ups, the package delivery giant, says, we are a data company. Ford says, they are a data company. Even the family farm is going high tech as investments in technology are driving better yields. We are in the digital era. New jobs are being created. Old jobs are being replaced by automation, or at the very least, augmented by automation. The release of Chat GPT just a few short months ago revealed an entirely new skill set, prompt writing. How do you interact with an AI bot? A few episodes [ago] here on Status Go, we talked about Sofia SFIA, the skills framework for the information age. Today we’re going to talk with Andrew Rosener, the director of digital fluency at Franklin College. Franklin is a liberal arts college. You may be surprised to hear that the college is located in central Indiana, not Silicon Valley or New York, or Austin. Digital Fluency is a skill for every employee, entrepreneur, and, frankly, citizen. So, Andrew, welcome to Status Go.
Andrew Rosner [00:02:10]:
Thanks for having me, Jeff. Glad to be here and talk about Franklin College and the Digital Fluency initiative.
Jeff Ton [00:02:16]:
I’m really excited by this because when I first learned about the program there at Franklin College, I thought, wow, this is really leading edge. It fills this gap that we have. And I think sometimes we make the assumption that because our kids are growing up with these cell phones in their hands, these smartphones, that they know all about technology and they really don’t. Before we dive into this concept of Digital Fluency, would you mind sharing a little bit about your background, your career journey? What brought you to this spot today?
Andrew Rosner [00:02:57]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I don’t have, I guess, a traditional path, as one would think, to get into tech, and sometimes I even have a hard time of considering myself as somebody who works in tech. So, I went to a small, private liberal arts college very similar to Franklin College and went to DePauw University and actually studied sports medicine there. I thought I was going to be an athletic trainer, right. For a long time. Knew I wanted to stay in sports, but got to be about the end of the journey there at DePaul, and it’s like, yeah, I don’t know if I want to be an athletic trainer anymore. So ended up going to grad school at IU specifically for sports marketing and management, again with the idea of I wanted to work in sports.
After that, luckily, while I was getting my master’s degree, a full-time job opened up in the athletics department. I was also part-time working in the athletics department at that time. And so was able to jump into that full-time role, specifically in the ticket office, selling tickets and ticket operations. Did that for a few years, then moved over to the marketing department within athletics. Really enjoyed that. Did that for three, four years, then the opportunity, and I kind of was ready for that next jump, ready for a leadership role within the department. And we got a great gift from Mark Cuban to create the Mark Cuban Center for Sports, Media and Technology. And again, product of timing was tabbed to lead that department, the Mark Cuban Center or the Cuban Center, and built that out, developed relationships with campus, and that then reignited my passion for working directly with students and developing learning opportunities for them. So that was a big part of what we did in the Cuban Center was working with the Kelly School of Business, the School of Informatics, a number of different schools on campus to develop internships and other learning opportunities for the really cool tech that we were utilizing in the Cuban Center on the athletics department side. Did that for four or five years and then saw this opening here at Franklin College and it kind of provided the opportunity to kind of get back to my roots, right. Small, private, liberal arts college, spend more time working directly with students and creating those learning opportunities. And so jumped at the chance when I saw this opportunity pop up, and been here for about two years and loving life.
Jeff Ton [00:05:52]:
That’s excellent. That’s quite a journey. So did you meet Cuban?
Andrew Rosner [00:05:58]:
No, I did not get to meet Mark Cuban personally, no.
Jeff Ton [00:06:04]:
Well, at least you got to implement that program there, which is a nationally recognized program. Well, let’s dive into this concept of digital fluency. First of all, can you define it? What is digital fluency?
Andrew Rosner [00:06:21]:
Yeah. That’s the million-dollar question, right? What in the world is this thing? And truth be told, when I saw the job posting, I had to look it up. I certainly had heard of digital. I think everyone knows what digital is, right? And I think everyone understands what fluency is, but I had never seen those two words put together in such a way and so definitely had to look that up. And we use the textbook definition quite a bit, and that is digital fluency is the ability to leverage technology, to create new knowledge, new challenges, new problems, and to complement those with critical thinking, complex problem solving and social intelligence. Now, it’s very textbook definition, right? How I like to think of it is most people have probably heard of digital literacy, right?
Jeff Ton [00:07:14]:
Yeah. I was going to ask, kind of what’s the difference there?
Andrew Rosner [00:07:17]:
Right? So how I think of the difference you can think of it in a number of different ways. How I think of it is I’m going to use the handyman tools example, right? So I’m at home, and I would consider myself literate on handyman tools. So I know what a drill is. I know that tool. I know how to use it. I know lefty loosey, righty tighty for screwdrivers. I understand the tools. I can maybe put together an Ikea table, right. Following directions maybe. Right. So I am literate in that sense. Fluency. How I think about it in that example is the ability, the skills, the understanding of the tools to build a table from scratch, take the raw materials, understand when and where, have the wisdom to be able to create something from scratch, create new things. And so that’s what we’re trying to do with the Digital Fluency initiative, is help develop that tool belt or that toolkit for our students so that they can go out there and create new things, innovation, be innovators and leaders in today’s modern economy.
Jeff Ton [00:08:35]:
Yeah. So maybe not becoming a trades person in using your tools, an expert in using the tools, but being able to use them at a higher skill level than I would put myself in the same category you just put yourself in. I know what a screwdriver is, but don’t ask me to build a piece of furniture unless it is Ikea, that I can do. So why is this concept of digital fluency so important today?
Andrew Rosner [00:09:12]:
Sure. Well, I think to take a step back and I’ll address why it’s important. But first, I think also what makes us a little bit different with what we’re doing with the Digital Fluency Initiative is it’s a campus-wide initiative, right? So, we are focused just as much on English, philosophy, exercise science students as an example as we are on our coding, our IT, our computer science, and data science students. It’s equal right across the board. So, we want to make sure that we are providing the same tools for all of our students, regardless of major. Why that’s important is we know that the skill set to succeed in today’s economy has changed and is constantly changing. I don’t know if it’ll ever stay the same. Right. And so, it’s incumbent on us to better prepare our students. The number one reason why students choose to go to college is to get a good job. Right. I think it was over 85% of students said that was the number one reason why they went to school. On the flip side, 10%, I’m not sure if I necessarily agree with this number, but one that I came across recently, an article I came across recently said that 10% of business leaders say colleges effectively prepare students for the modern economy. And so, if students are going to college in order to get a good job, yet the people who are hiring them are saying college isn’t doing a great job. We need to rethink how we’re preparing students and the skills and the tools that we’re providing them.
Jeff Ton [00:10:57]:
Yeah, well, I know I saw you speak recently, and I think the other stat that really jumped out at me was that and I may get this wrong, so feel free to correct me. By 2030, the available jobs, 85% of them don’t even exist today.
Andrew Rosner [00:11:18]:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the stat, and it’s been widely publicized there. By 2030, 85% of the jobs haven’t even been created yet. So how do we prepare students for jobs that we don’t even know what they are? Right. We don’t have those job descriptions.
Jeff Ton [00:11:34]:
Right. You have to prepare them how to use the tools. And I think also instill that continuous learning, the ability to be curious and learn and understand. So, I think what I heard you say in that, Andrew, is that you’re not suggesting that every student that goes to Franklin College has to enroll in computer science. Right. You’re spreading this program out to all the disciplines and all the schools. So, can you talk a little bit about how you’re doing that? And I know the program is in its infancy, but how are you doing it today? And where’s your vision for where this is going?
Andrew Rosner [00:12:25]:
Right, so we’re definitely taking a scaffolded or a tiered approach to what we’re trying to do in the classroom, specifically, and start big picture-wise, developing brand new majors. Right. We’ve done that. Created our data science major, which started in the fall. Really excited about that program. One thing that is unique, I think, to what we’re able to do is we’re able to put a unique liberal arts spin on a data science major. Right?
So, a lot of our focus then is talking about data bias and equity and how that plays a part in today’s economy in businesses. I think you mentioned what Ford said. They’re a data company. You would never think about that, right? You mentioned AI in the intro as well, in machine learning. Okay. Tons of equity issues and bias issues in that. And so, we’re able to put that, I think, unique liberal art spin on maybe a more traditional tech major. So that’s one way. Right.
Big picture developing new majors, maybe a step below that would be something that we’re calling our Digital Fluency endorsement. And that is similar to, like, a Credential or it’s just under what would be a minor. It’s a set of classes. I think the list is now up to 20 classes. And then some co-curricular experiences as well that students would if they if they earn those or they take those classes over their four years, they would earn this Digital Fluency endorsement. And again, what we’ve done with that mix of classes is we spread it across campus and then made the requirement that two out of the four required classes have to be outside of your major. Right.
That’s encouraging. Say a philosophy major to go take CMP 130, our Intro to Computing class. Or if you are a coder, right, you are one of our data science majors or computer science majors. Can you go take a nonprofit digital leadership course? Or can you go take a graphic design course and really set yourself up for something like a UX UI design career? Right.
And then there’s all the co-curricular as well. I think rubber meets the road on this. Digital Fluency endorsement is it’s been vetted by industry. So we’ve gone to TechPoint. They’re valued partners in what we’re doing. We’ve said, hey, here’s our program. Are these the skills that employers are looking for? So we have that seal of approval from Tech Point, which I think is going to be really valuable for our students, something that they can put on a resume and go talk about in an interview.
Then we’re also so if that’s kind of the middle level, the bottom level there, then would just be reimagining and rethinking some of our classroom projects and in-class exercises. So how do we put a digital spin on a traditional in-class project? And you think about one of the easiest, best examples is a traditional paper that you would write or an essay. Well, can instead can we make that a multimedia project? Or could we create a podcast right, where they’re learning audio editing, they’re learning new hardware and technology on top of the content knowledge of that class.
So it’s again, it’s that layering effect or scaffolding effect of both your content but also the digital or the technical skills on top of that.
Jeff Ton [00:16:27]:
So, Andrew, I want to get back to our conversation here, and I love what you were pointing out there just before the break that you’re looking at your traditional classes and saying, how can we add technology to that? And for our listeners who may not be able to see us here on video, andrew is sitting at a very tricked out podcast studio on campus. And so even things like using those tools, as you mentioned, is important. Are you taking this concept of Digital Fluency also into some of the extracurriculars that are available for students?
Andrew Rosner [00:17:55]:
Absolutely. And you mentioned the podcast studio. That’s a part of one component of our center for tech innovation that I oversee as part of the Digital Fluency Initiative. We like to think of it as the hub of the Digital Fluency Initiative is where Podcast Studio is. But I think another thing that makes us unique. And I don’t want to make this sound like a sales pitch for Franklin College, but I think one thing that does make us unique is all the resources that we have here within the Center for Tech Innovation, including the podcast studio, 3D printers, VR headsets, photo and video equipment, et cetera. They are obviously available for class projects. But one thing that makes us a little bit different is that we also make all of this equipment and resources and technology available for co-curricular or extracurricular personal passion projects for our students.
So, for example, if a student wanted to come in and use this Podcast Studio to create voiceovers for video game video that they’re posting on YouTube, which is a thing, apparently, I didn’t know that was a thing. They are certainly more than welcome to come and do that. If they wanted to utilize our 3D printers and create a little Etsy shop of things that they’re they’re printing, they certainly can and had a student do that. Right.
And that’s the great thing about allowing students to pursue those personal passion projects or what their interests and goals are, is that’s the stuff they’re interested in, right? Yeah, that’s what brings them in. And maybe not. They don’t know, hey, I’m learning digital marketing through Etsy or Ecommerce or I’m learning video editing while I’m also playing video games. Right. They don’t realize that. But that’s where the magic happens, is when you’re able to learn those things and stuff that you’re interested in.
Jeff Ton [00:20:04]:
I’ve said for years that if you want to see where technology is going, watch a gamer. The technology that games are built on today, when you look back to when I was a kid and some of the game technology, we now use that every day. And so, you look at augmented reality, virtual reality, it’s video games.
And you’re right, people do post themselves playing video games on YouTube. My grandson is a huge fan of watching some of the games on YouTube, so I know that is a thing. So, as you’re sitting here today, where is this program going? What’s your vision for what this looks like two years from now, three years from now?
Andrew Rosner [00:21:02]:
Yeah. So I think we’ve made a lot of progress across campus here internally, getting a lot of faculty buy in, which has been really key to our early success. But the vision for our program is to empower Franklin College and students to be on the right side of innovation. So, I think you mentioned AI earlier and maybe the effect on jobs there. We want to make sure that the Digital Fluency Initiative is the reason why people are getting jobs and keeping jobs. Right. AI is not going to replace you, but somebody utilizing AI tools might. So, we want to make sure that our students are well prepared from a tools and skills perspective, that they are going to be on the right side of innovation. And similarly, we want to do the same thing for Franklin College. We want to make sure that Franklin College is set up for success in the long term with this innovative learning experience that we’re providing for our students.
Jeff Ton [00:22:08]:
Yeah, it’s interesting, and we talked a little bit about this in my intro, that this explosion of Chat GPT, just as an example, and the rise in the need to teach people and train people how to interact with it, because writing the prompts for that is a skill set. So, you all are in education. There’s been a little bit of an uproar about Chat GPT in the education space. Use it in the classroom or, no way…where’s kind of the stance.
Andrew Rosner [00:22:49]:
Yeah, I can’t speak for everyone here on campus, but I teach a digital Marketing salesforce fundamentals course and absolutely we’re utilizing it. Right. It’s important. And I’ve had a number of guest speakers come in and talk about how they’re using it in their daily workflows. So to me, it’s important, as we’re preparing our students to enter the workforce, that they have a good, strong understanding of how those tools are being used.
And so, the most specific way earlier in the semester, we did SEO Search Engine Optimization in class exercise, where we had students develop a set of keywords for their target market, for their brand or their company that they were assigned. Then we took that keywords, and we went and used Chat GBT to help us develop a further extended keyword list. But then also, how are we creating content based on blog posts based on those keywords to help us target the right customer? Tomorrow, we’re going to do an email marketing in-class exercise where we’ll utilize some AI tools to write better subject lines. Right. You got to write a good subject line. That’s how you get people to open up email.
Jeff Ton [00:24:15]:
That’s right. That’s how you get people to click.
Andrew Rosner [00:24:17]:
Yeah. So, we’re going to look at how to utilize those tools in real world industry examples. Right, that’s excellent. Outside the classroom, you mentioned extracurriculars, co-curriculars. Last week I led an AI tools workshop and again, was not really focused a lot on Chat GPT. I think most of their students know how to use that or have experience with that, but rather we focused on tools like Beautiful.AI, Hyperwrite.AI, and then Queen Voice that tool as well with the idea that these are tools that are going to help in your production of quality content for class, right? Yeah.
So, this is not a tool to help you write an essay or get you out of writing an essay, but how can you better, more effectively or efficiently create class materials and take what used to be maybe two, three hours right, of creating a PowerPoint deck? Instead, can you spend five minutes creating a PowerPoint deck by utilizing Beautiful.AI? And then what do you do with that? Save time? How are you able to better your presentation? Hone your message, craft your message, do more research, fact check to make it even better, right?
Jeff Ton [00:25:52]:
Even better. Yeah. Well, and I know I was not aware of beautiful AI until I saw your presentation in which you had used that for your deck. And to our listeners, if you’ve not checked that out, you should. The decks are spectacular coming out the other end.
Now, I want to get into the more depth of the program itself. You all have developed this there at Franklin around a set of, you call them, core digital competencies. And I think, as I’m recalling your presentation, there are five core digital competencies. Do I have that right? What are the five?
Andrew Rosner [00:26:38]:
Andrew yeah, so to list them off, we have our essential digital skills, digital communication, data management and preservation, data analysis and presentation, and then critical design, making and development.
Jeff Ton [00:26:53]:
And so, as you’re developing the programs, part of what you’re doing is keeping those competencies in mind and how do you leverage them within whatever the framework or the coursework that you’re building, right?
Andrew Rosner [00:27:08]:
Absolutely. So, we want to make sure that these skills are interconnected, interdisciplinary, and embedded in the curriculum is our ultimate goal with these skills.
Jeff Ton [00:27:19]:
Yeah. For our listeners, could you just repeat those again? And for our listeners, we’ll provide a link to this as well in our show notes. But just for our listeners, what are the five again?
Andrew Rosner [00:27:31]:
Andrew yes.
- Essential digital skills, which would be network, file management, troubleshooting, strategic web database searching, those types of essential digital skills.
- Digital communication, so collaborative communication, writing and publishing, audiovisual production,
- Data management and preservation to be collection, privacy, security, organizing and managing data,
- Data analysis and presentation. Again, essentially data visualization. Right. How do we tell story with our data?
- And then critical design, making and development, algorithmic thinking, coding, project management, design thinking. Those types of skills would fall into that category.
Jeff Ton [00:28:21]:
Okay, excellent. Well, and I know you mentioned bias and making sure that we are eliminating as much bias as we can out of the tools. We haven’t even touched on ethical use of technology. As you were talking about creating the subject line and having people click. You could take that to the extreme, but we’ll save that conversation for the next time you’re on Status Go, Andrew.
I want to talk a little bit about the corporate partnerships because a lot of our listeners are in corporate America, they’re in corporate It, or they are in a tech company itself. So, talk about the corporate partnerships that you have and that you’re looking for in this program.
Andrew Rosner [00:29:15]:
Yeah. So, employer partnerships, key to our digital fluency initiative. And there’s a wide range of ways that we can work together. One is through our digital internship stipend. And so that’s a relatively new program that we just stood up that, well, I guess to, to give you a little bit of a background on, on that. So we were hearing a very common theme and talking to both employer partners but also to students. And that was essentially employer partners, especially nonprofits and startups are saying, hey, we’d love to take on interns from Franklin College, but we just don’t have the funds to pay them. And so they’d often be non paid internships.
And then on the flip side, students were saying, hey, I’d love to go take a cool internship at a cool startup tech startup, but it’s unpaid and I need to make some money over the summer. So they would oftentimes forego the tech startup non-paid internship or nonprofit opportunity and go work at the local mom and pop store in their hometown over the summer.
So, we stepped in with some of our grant money and developed this digital internship stipend to again encourage our students to go take those often unpaid or very low paid internship opportunities, but that are so valuable to their experience. It’s where they get to apply what they’re learning right in the classroom into a real world example and make those vital networking connections as they’re looking to apply for jobs.
So what that does is Franklin College will pay $10 an hour on top of whatever the host organization is paying. So if they’re not paying anything, then at least the student is getting $10 an hour. If they’re paying $10 an hour, then now the student is making $20. Again, really trying to encourage those students to not pass up those awesome opportunities that are out there.
So, if anybody listening is looking for interns but maybe don’t have the funds to take on interns, that’s where the digital internship stipend can come into play.
Then we’re always looking for ways that we can partner and marry academia and industry together. One great example, there is the digital marketing salesforce class that I mentioned a little bit go, that’s co-taught. So I teach that with Leigh Hamer from Lumavate. She’s the VP of Customer Success at Lumavate, which is an Indy digital experiences platform company. And that’s been awesome, right? Students are now able to stay way up, more up-to-date on industry than if I were just teaching that all by myself, right? And not only that, but then students now have access to the Lumavate platform and can create these digital experiences in addition to then learning from an expert like Leigh from industry.
Jeff Ton [00:32:54]:
That’s excellent. And for our listeners, you may recall that we interviewed Stephanie Cox of Lumavate on this program about her passion for escape rooms, which was an interesting conversation.
Well, Andrew, we are out of time. But before I let you go, I want to make sure that we leave our listeners with a call to action. Right. We love action here on status. Go. It’s kind of in our name. So, what are one or two things that our listeners should go do tomorrow? Because they listen to our conversation today?
Andrew Rosner [00:33:32]:
Yeah, I think that, to me, what’s really valuable you mentioned it at the outset, was that Sophia, right? It’s that skills assessment. To me, it’s Go take that skills assessment, because that’s what is at the core of what we’re doing with the Digital Fluency initiative, is making sure our students have the skills that they need to succeed. And so you can’t really do that unless you know what skills you currently have.
You mentioned it, too, at the beginning. The importance of learning to learn technology is always changing. So that’s another key component of what we’re trying to do, is to teach our students how to learn so that they will always be prepared for whatever changes come up in the future.
Jeff Ton [00:34:21]:
Excellent. I think those are a couple of great actions. And to our listeners, we’ll be sure and have links in the show notes to Franklin College’s website where they talked about this. And if possible, I don’t know if this is possible, but a link to the Beautiful.AI deck that you shared?
Andrew Rosner [00:34:41]:
Yeah, absolutely. I can share that.
Jeff Ton [00:34:43]:
We can provide a link to that as well. That would be great. Andrew, thank you so much for being on Status Go today. I really appreciate it. I’d love to have you back in the future and talk maybe about how you’re handling the ethics conversation, especially around AI. I think that would be fascinating. But thank you for carving out time today. I appreciate it.
Andrew Rosner [00:35:05]:
Thanks, Jeff. Really appreciate you having me on
Jeff Ton [00:35:08]:
To our listeners, if you want to learn more, be sure and visit InterVision.com. If you want to go directly to the Status Go podcast, that’s InterVision.com/Status-Go. You can also join our brand-new LinkedIn Group Status Go to continue the conversation. We hope to create dialogue around some of our episodes there, so check that out as well. This is Jeff Ton and Andrew Rosner. Thank you very much for listening
