EduMax 2022 recap: Digital literacy around the globe

As we enter the post-pandemic future and the labor market continues to evolve, the next few years will truly be a period of transition for higher education. While this environment makes it challenging to forecast, students and families continue to see the value of higher education and many adults are returning to earn new credentials and degrees. We must be prepared to provide career-ready programming that bridges the distance between higher education and industry, helping students to hone the essential skills and digital abilities employers expect now more than before.

During EduMAX 2022, the two-day pre-conference gathering at the annual Adobe MAX Creativity Conference, we discussed ways of reshaping curricula across disciplines with high-impact learning experiences and shared best practices for cultivating digital literacy. We welcomed higher education leaders, faculty, and staff from diverse institutions — representing 2.4 million students worldwide. While the Creative Campus Collaboration and their peers have convened across virtual events each year, it was amazing to be together for the first time since 2019.

I was overjoyed to reunite in-person with our growing collective at EduMAX, comprised of 63 innovative institutions of all sizes and makeups, to examine the impacts we can have on four common focus areas: access and equity, career readiness, engagement and retention, and innovation. To inspire your efforts to transform teaching and learning on your campus, I am excited to share insights from our distinguished speakers who are helping to bring education into the future.

Moving the planet forward with compelling stories

Mala Sharma, Adobe’s vice president and general manager of Creative Cloud Product Marketing, Community and Digital Media Education, kicked off the day by examining how students are harnessing creativity in entrepreneurial ways as part of the evolving creator economy, and what educational institutions can do to help them build essential 21st century skills. The World Economic Forum predicts creative and digital literacy skills are among the top 10 skills required in the workforce for 2025.

“Students expect to be more creative and want their teaching to be more creative,” Sharma said, citing recent research from Adobe in partnership with Civitas Learning, LinkedIn and The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). “We have evidence that when you teach students with visual tools it increases engagement and success. And it’s not just about success in school — it accelerates their careers.”

Keynote speaker Frank Sesno, professor and director of strategic initiatives at George Washington University, supported that call to inspire the next generation of storytellers. In developing Planet Forward, he created a multimedia platform to help students make the leap from content creators to changemakers, addressing what he calls “wicked problems” related to sustainability and the environment.

“To my students, I tell them I would rather see you fail creatively than succeed conventionally,” said Sesno. “I am inspired by this every single day. I believe in the power of story and so the challenge to our students has to be a hopeful one.” For many EduMAX attendees, this would become a galvanizing mantra from the conference.

Encouraged by Planet Forward mentors and Sesno to push the envelope, correspondents from various colleges and universities go on storytelling expeditions around the world to create compelling narratives with visuals and data using tools like Adobe Express.

“That creative process is so rewarding — it’s that aha moment,” Sesno emphasized, holding up his cellphone. “This is why we need to teach differently, because people are learning differently and they are connecting differently. I actually think we can teach great creativity.”

As a law student, Deepti Bansal Gage joined the program in 2020 without any journalism or photography experience but was passionate about using stories to influence the world around her. Recently, she traveled to the Galápagos Islands with National Geographic to report on the importance of marine protection — follow her life-changing journey here. Upon completing the program, another correspondent from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry was driven to switch his career focus to policy and communication, rather than pursue a law degree.

Unleashing genius through digital literacy at Winston-Salem State University

Before sharing a new strategic plan to increase digital literacy initiatives at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), chancellor Elwood L. Robinson, marked the occasion by honoring the institution’s 130-year history. Originally founded in 1892 to teach enslaved individuals, WSSU has grown to be a leading historically Black college and university (HBCU).

Joined by WSSU faculty, Dr. Wanda White, director of the Center for Innovative and Transformative Instruction and Dr. Jack Monell, associate professor of Justice Studies, chancellor Robinson outlined his vision for each graduate from the incoming class of 2022 to leave with a diploma in one hand and a business plan in the other.

“We are unleashing the genius in every student that comes to WSSU, we believe that genius is equally distributed among us,” Robinson said. “We think the opportunities to express that genius have been denied for too many people for too long. And we're going to change that. We're about expanding the possibilities.”

White underscored how WSSU and Adobe’s partnership sets a new standard, describing their five-year transformation journey since becoming the first HBCU to be designated as an Adobe Creative Campus. The institution is making huge strides to decrease the digital divide for students and faculty. Now faculty teaching health, science, nursing, physical therapy and education courses have all started integrating digital tools like Adobe Creative Cloud — no longer limited only to the first-year humanities courses.

“Digital literacy is incredibly vital to today's society. Now more than ever, it is vital for students to express their voice and counter the misinformation we see in our society,” explained Monell, who also serves as an Adobe Creative Campus fellow.

Students in his social justice course collaborate with community partners to develop strategies and content to combat injustices using digital tools. Their collective “scholarly activism” has made a difference over the years upon the WSSU community-at-large, most notably by helping exonerate Ronnie Long in 2020, who was wrongfully convicted and served over 44 years in prison.

Teeside University unlocks the power of creativity with future-facing learning

After attending EduMAX nearly three years ago, Professor Mark Simpson, pro vice-chancellor for Learning and Teaching, and Jonathan Eaton, director of Student Learning and Academic Registrar, were inspired to launch their own distinctive “future-facing learning” strategy at Teeside University — on their way to becoming the first Adobe Creative Campus in the UK at a pivotal point during the height of lockdowns in 2020.

“Something extraordinary happened,” said Simpson, describing how hosting remote gatherings sparked educators’ hope and imagination. “At the heart of what we did in those Creative Campus live events was to pose a provocation to our academic staff. How can we take creativity, see and build it into all aspects of curriculum, design, delivery and most importantly assessments so that our students have the appropriate skills to tell their stories to employers, to industry, to the communities that we serve.”

Eaton shared that Teeside’s digital transformation approach has been about operating at scale, first building awareness among the academic community and then focusing on the disciplines to maintain momentum. To catalyze change within each of its five academic schools the university leveraged an Adobe grant to build a faculty development program and learning design bootcamps that enabled educators to build confidence by trying new things. For example, the business school developed a successful module for first-year students to work in collaboration using Creative Cloud to produce a digital artifact that brings their stories to life.

“I'm really keen... to use this as a platform to take these individual examples that we'll see from institutions today and actually look at ways of harnessing them and getting the students to interconnect and work together,” said Eaton. “I think that could be a really, really powerful next stage for our development.”

Centering learning around creativity across the California State University System

Incorporating technology in meaningful ways across curricula can be complex, especially if you happened to be the main advocate of digital literacy for the largest higher education system in the world.

Over a decade ago, Amir Dabirian, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at CSU Fullerton (CSUF), began leading the way by bringing digital tools to a handful of campuses in the California State University (CSU) System. His determination and their successful implementation would eventually propel every CSU campus in 2018 to grant full access to the suite of Adobe software to all 486,000 students statewide, enhancing their academic life and beyond.

While there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach for integrating digital literacy into courses, Dabirian emphasized the importance “investing in people.” He described the collective impact of an advisory committee of passionate advisors, faculty learning communities, and student-led Adobe ambassadors across every campus have helped to move the needle. With continued focus on embedding creativity and digital programming, the College of Business at CSUF has now surpassed the College of Arts for the most use of Adobe Creative Cloud.

Vincent Del Casino, Jr., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at San Jose State University, closed the presentation with a reflection on the existential crisis that higher education faces. His moving poem, “Creativity, Belonging and the Post-Pandemic Blues,” highlighted exciting examples of pedagogy throughout CSU and encouraged educators to reimagine the learning experience to prepare students for the modern workforce.

“The University of the Future must allow for the organic growth of learning from those whose experiences are as powerful as the stories, histories and performances we find in our textbooks,” Casino implored. “A normal made new is possible if we center learning around creativity, provide genuine space for engagement, centering learning on a sense of belonging, on connection. This must happen in all educational spaces as we seek to close not just the digital divide, but the computing divide as well.”

Swinburne University boosts digital literacy and innovation through ‘making’

Founded over a century ago as technical college, Swinburne University has continued to honor that legacy by offering both vocational and higher education programs, since evolving into a multicampus institution spanning four countries — and Australia's first Creative Campus.

Sarah Maddison, professor and deputy vice-chancellor of Education, Experience and Employability at Swinburne University, along with Clare Dyson, associate professor of Digital Literacies and current student Silvia Corruggiero, discussed how they are preparing students for a digital-rich future as well as the theme of daring to do things differently.

“We’ve decided to focus on ‘making’ as a teaching and learning methodology. This approach may seem simplistic, but it's a really large shift for a university to make,” said Dyson. “Making involves risk, play and failure, and it foregrounds those ideas in learning spaces that are traditionally anti-failure and anti, which is higher ed. It asks us to look at problem solving and how that affects our relationship with technology.”

To foster all of this innovation and boost digital literacy, she shared that Swinburne has created a community of practice that motivates faculty engagement with training and support, as well as facilitates experimentation through the Adobe Innovation Grant Program. Their newfound confidence and creative mindset have yielded over 60 different projects embedded with digital literacies, as staff continue to reimagine their approach to curriculum.

Using the four-stages of a breakup to encapsulate her experience, Corruggiero underscored the academic and personal growth she gained by completing one such dynamic project, which asked students to make videos instead of typical slide presentations. This important learning experience would help her to distinguish herself from other candidates when speaking with recruiters and hiring managers upon graduation.

Student Spotlight: A magical journey of science and storytelling

Hillary Andales has represented the Creative Campus community in amazing ways since presenting for the first time at EduMAX in 2019 and continues to be an advocate of digital literacy. Now a senior in her last year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Andales returned to the EduMAX stage to reflect on her journey through “the unlikely union of science and magic.”

Merging creative and digital skills to convey complex scientific concepts has always been foundational to Andales’ academic career. Throughout her “magical journey,” from surviving a typhoon that hit her hometown to gaining global exposure as a result of her award-winning video explaining relativity, and recently collaborating with the biggest media company in the Philippines to report on Filipino microsatellites, Adobe Creative Cloud has remained the catalyst propelling her forward. She used the Big Bang theory as a metaphor to share her experiences, combining her passion for science, creativity and storytelling to make sense of the world.

“We need people who can create something from nothing. People who can see the gaps and are motivated to fill it with magic,” Andales explained. “As educators we need to empower future magicians by training them with the right tools and the right attitude to take the status quo and transform it into something better.”

She plans to pursue a full-time career in science communication upon graduation from MIT, to get a wider audience excited about how everything connects and “create [magic] on an even bigger scale.”

Prototyping the classroom of the future at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) has also adopted strategies and invested in the spaces to nurture digital and creative skills across their academic community — with the bold goal of flipping the educational paradigm to become the university of the future.

Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at VCU, provided several examples of VCU faculty exploring new immersive ways to teach, and facilitating cross-disciplinary collaboration. From the School of Arts and Computer Science teaching students to write hip hop music using code and algorithms, to members of the VCU dance and engineering departments using AI and real-time machine-learning to choreograph performances between dancers and robots, transformative learning experiences like these help nurture a campus-wide culture of digital literacy.

“We are in the process of reinventing our general education curriculum, Sotiropoulos said. “I want all our students, every student regardless of discipline, to be introduced to computational thinking. I also want our students to have entrepreneurial literacy. We want entrepreneurialism to infuse every aspect of their education process.”

The VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation epitomizes that entrepreneurial spirit. This prototype for the classroom of the future — which VCU is committed to scaling across its entire academic system — invites students from any discipline to experiment and personalize their education in nontraditional learning spaces, as well as earn stackable credentials. Through programs like the Shift Retail Lab, which merges a retail space and lab, the next generation of thinkers, designers and entrepreneurs can develop their ideas into products ready for market.

“We just launched a new product from one of our students,” said Andrew Ilnicki, director of digital innovation at the da Vinci Center. “Julian successfully raised funding and received final packaging delivered for the RVA Vegan Festival. This is a vegan student who we've worked with from design thinking to venture creation to product design and packaging, all using Adobe tools.” Ilnicki also noted that several of his product innovation students have successfully secured internships and job offers upon graduation after engaging with clients and partners during these real-world experiences.

University of Texas at San Antonio

Longtime Creative Campus collaborator and partner, Dr. Melissa Vito, vice provost for Academic Innovation at University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), shared results from a study conducted in partnership between Civitas Learning, LinkedIn, and Adobe that quantified the impact of creative skills on academic and career performance.

The initial study analyzed course mastery (earning an A or B), course grades, term GPAs, and persistence term-to-term, as well as career growth. Vito highlighted the following insights when students were enrolled in courses using Adobe products:

• Students achieved 8.2 percent higher grades.
• Students stay engaged and enrolled longer — higher rates of term-to-term completion.
• Underrepresented populations, including Hispanic, African American, first-term and female students, showed higher rates of success.

The results are equally encouraging and vital as institutions evaluate investments in digital literacy to address their goals for student engagement and retention.

“The Adobe research that we did provides a bedrock and proof of concept about what we could do, and we're carrying that further,” Vito shared. UTSA plans to look into faculty outcomes and impact, as well as to update the initial study by adding another year.

The need to support and better engage students in the classroom was a sentiment that Chad Mahood, director of UTSA’s department of communication, also underscored.

“Again, we need to teach differently because students are learning differently,” said Mahood. “What Adobe does is it really forces you in a very easy way to stay creative, to bring in content, and we should always do that with everything we do in pedagogy. Adobe just makes it easy and fun.”

Igniting transformation at the University of Utah and Weber State University

To wrap up EduMAX 2022, faculty members from the University of Utah (UOU) and Weber State (WSU) engaged the audience in group activities, while sharing their unique efforts to transform how students learn and what it means for students and faculty to be digitally fluent.

Deborah Keyek-Franssen, associate vice president and dean for University Connected Learning at UOU, described the “Strong Start” program for incoming freshman to earn an Adobe Creative Communicator badge in either an English, math or design course, to begin building foundational digital skills even before the start of the academic year. Additionally, first-year students are encouraged to seek out opportunities to create and learn at the Adobe Creative Commons, a 2000 square-foot space located in Kahlert Village, the newest residential community on campus.

“The pedagogy of play is something I'm really fascinated about,” said Holly K. Johnson, associate director and DLX Innovation and Outreach, University Connected Learning at UOU. “So the Commons, it's really the hub of creative connections. And when you think about the genius bar, well the geniuses are the students working there and the students that are coming in, they're all working together. This is really student-led, peer-to-peer.”

Brenda Kowalewski, associate provost for High Impact Education Experiences and faculty Excellence at WSU, outlined her institution’s ambitious vision for every graduate to become digitally fluent by 2025. She described their digital transformation journey across three phases — exploration, experimentation, and explosion — on the way to becoming a Creative Campus 18 months ago. From testing new curriculum, to touring industry spaces and visiting other universities, WSU engaged in conversations to determine the guideposts for digital fluency.

Stephanie Speicher, assistant professor and digital fluency faculty in residence at WSU also underscored the importance of creating a safe space and community of practice to help faculty broaden digital pedagogy to leave behind archaic ways of teaching.

“We want our students to take flight. In order for that to happen, we need to take flight as faculty,” Speicher said. “I’ve heard so much today that it is the combination — what happens across our campus in terms of the growth of our faculty and staff alongside our students. In this space I have felt that palpable energy today. When we create connections, when we are learning together, it brings us power.”

As colleges and universities restructure to better prepare students for the workplace of tomorrow, it will be vital to build learning communities that will motivate and nurture digital literacy. The common theme unifying what many of our wonderful EduMAX 2022 speakers shared is the desire to bring lived experiences into the learning environment in a holistic way, to meet students and faculty where they are. Institutions have more headway to make when it comes to digital transformation. If higher education leaders do not implement immersive ways of teaching and engaging students, this next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs will find other avenues to learn.

For more information on how to integrate digital skills across disciplines and throughout curricula, please visit the Digital Literacy resources page. If you’re interested in learning how your college or university can become an Adobe Creative Campus to drive greater academic and professional success, please contact your sales representative.