This post is an updated version of Planning to Build a New Digital Skills Curriculum? Read This First, one of our most-used blog posts. It was posted in 2022, so we’ve revisited and revised the resources and guidance.
Building a curriculum to teach digital skills to your community can feel like one of the heaviest lifts when starting a digital inclusion program. Luckily for all of us, there’s a wealth of resources to pull from to make that lift lighter.
Starting with and building off existing curricula has multiple benefits: it saves time developing structure and lets you focus on customizing it to meet the needs of your community, pulls in the expertise of other folks who are doing digital inclusion work, and can also help with the perpetual struggle of keeping curriculum updated (as you’re referencing materials that will be updated as technology changes).
We’ve pulled together recommendations from the NDIA community to give you a one-stop guide to building your own digital skills curriculum. Given how tight funding is for nearly everyone in our field, we’ve prioritized free resources, but have also included some paid options produced by NDIA affiliates (marked with a “$$”) that fill gaps not covered by free resources.
The experiences of existing programs lead us to recommend a three-step process:
- Talk with the community you’re serving to identify skills they’re interested in learning,
- Identify a digital skills framework that reflects those community interests and provides you with a roadmap for class development, and
- Build out classes by modifying existing resources to save time and incorporate lessons learned from other programs.
1. Talk to your community
The first step is to identify the learning needs in your community – which means talking to the folks you want to serve. The State Digital Equity Plan Toolkit (pg. 58) has a section on identifying digital equity barriers. The Digital Inclusion Program Manual (pg. 29) provides a run-through of the community engagement process from the City of Long Beach and links to Seattle’s Technology Access and Adoption Study, which is a good template.
The National Governors’ Association report, Using Data to Advance Digital Skills: A State Playbook, provides useful guidance and datasets to identify needed skills in your community.
2. Develop a digital skills framework
A digital skills framework is a guiding document that determines the direction, audience, and focus of a digital skills program. Think of it as a roadmap, laying out the necessary skills any given learner would have to achieve their digital literacy goals.
As part of their work around the now-stalled Digital Equity Act, some states developed statewide digital skills frameworks (Some examples: Colorado, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan), which could serve as a strong starting point already informed by community feedback.
Other national and international frameworks provide firm foundations to build from. These include:
- The European Union’s Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (DigComp)
- The DQ (Digital Intelligence) Framework
- The International Society for Technology in Education Student Standards
A seminal framework, The Digital Skill Sets for Diverse Users report, was developed by the Seattle Digital Equity Initiative. David Keyes, one of the authors, developed an extremely simplified checklist, that provides a very easy entry point.
Interested in learning more? The Open Technology Institute’s report, Exploring Paths to a U.S. Digital Skills Framework (and Why We Need One), provides an overview of several frameworks and makes the case for why the US needs a national framework for digital skills.
3. Use existing resources
Here’s where you get to move from theory to practice by building out the classes for your community! But you don’t have to start from scratch – below is a table of resources recommended by the NDIA community.
| Program | Creator | Languages | Features | Facilitator Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Digital Skills | English | Video-based lessons with activities and teacher guides | Yes | |
| Digital Citizenship | Common Sense Education | English | Built for K-12 but easily adapted for adults, focuses on privacy, media literacy, and well-being | Yes |
| DigitalLearn | Public Library Association | English, Spanish | Each class includes instructor guide, slides, handouts. Also provides templates to build your own courses | Yes |
| DigitalLIFT Workshop Curricula ($$) | DigitalLIFT | English | Workshop plans come with handouts, slides, and lesson plan. $75 each. | Yes |
| Digital Literacy Courses and Resources | Microsoft | English, Arabic, Bulgarian, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese | A six-part computer basics video class available for download in multiple languages. Also available through LinkedIn Learning. | No |
| Give Help: Digital Literacy Resources for Educators & Navigators | Marylanders Online | English | Collects both in-house lessons and resources from other sources | Yes |
| Grow with Google | English, Spanish, French, more | Brings Google resources to organizations and provides career-focused certifications | Yes, if you register as Grow with Google partner | |
| Learn with Us | The Internet Society | English, French, Spanish | Mostly higher-level internet info, but privacy courses are great for newer learners | No |
| LearnFree | LearnFree | English | Formerly GCFGlobal, now under new owners, and still in transition. Offers self-paced tutorials on basics, Office, AI, and more. | Some in the Teacher Guides section |
| Senior Planet | Older Adults Technology Services (OATS) by AARP | English, Spanish | Live, synchronous classes, videos, and printed materials for community members 60+ | Yes, if you join the Senior Planet license program |
A related resource is the Digital Skills Library from World Education. It collects many of the above resources and makes them searchable by skill, format, and more.
A last, more unique resource: Northstar Digital Literacy was developed by Literacy Minnesota to offer digital literacy skills assessments, complete with certificates of achievement. The program, now also available in Spanish, provides targeted learning opportunities to help users build skills and address deficits identified in their assessments.
Paid subscriptions to Northstar Digital allow organizations to track the growth of digital skills in their community, identify areas of need and strength, proctor digital skills assessments, and engage in training for staff members to increase impact.
Planning for the Future
As we all pivot to meet new demands and challenges, rather than investing funds into building new digital skills training materials, consider where you can lean on your fellow digital inclusion community members and utilize and modify existing resources to meet your needs.
If you’re having trouble finding material on specific subject areas or instruction methods, you may not be the first or only one. If you are looking for a particular resource and cannot find it, ask the NDIA community! The NDIA listserv is a great resource to access community knowledge, and other opportunities, such as working groups, offer chances to dig deeper into resources and connect more with other members.
Partnering with communities with similar demographics across your region, or across the country, can be beneficial not just for the organizations directly involved, but also for the broader digital inclusion community.
Did we miss something? Do you have a resource you particularly rely on to teach digital skills you want to share? Let us know: [email protected]