Beyond the Tools: Developing Students’ Technological Fluency for College, Career, and an AI-Enabled World
1:45 PM - 2:30 PM (EDT)
E-150 (1st Floor)
Today’s college students need more than proficiency with individual software applications. They need technological fluency: the ability to identify, learn, select, integrate, evaluate, and adapt technologies to accomplish meaningful goals. We introduce the ASCEND developmental model for technological competence: Awareness and Exposure, Scaffolded Use, Continued Practice, Embedded Integration, Independent Selection, and Dynamic Adaptation. We expand the technological ecosystem students encounter, including productivity, collaboration, data analysis, research, communication, and generative AI tools, and how technological competence can develop across curricular experiences. Through small-group and reflection activities, participants use ASCEND model to examine where students encounter technology, identify gaps in practice and opportunities for greater independence, and consider how existing student experiences can be redesigned to support progression through the ASCEND stages. Participants will leave with a practical developmental model they can adapt to their own programs and institutional contexts to help students build the technological skills increasingly expected in the workplace.
Joseph Foy, CUNY School of Professional Studies; Calvester Legister, John Jay College