Navigating Digital Divides: Access, Policy, & Praxis

The W&M Washington Center is pleased to welcome Professor Adam Barger to teach "Navigating Digital Divides: Access, Policy, & Praxis" 

• 3 credits
• INTR with GOVT attribute

How do we, as a society, make the digital world work for us and not against us?
Navigating Digital Divides: Access, Policy, & Praxis explores living and learning in the digital age through consideration of internet law, digital technology advocacy, digital sociology, and artificial intelligence. Reaching beyond basic digital literacy, this course proposes digital fluency as a solution for developing informed and empowered perspectives of the digital world and how best to thrive in it. We tackle big questions around historical and ongoing divides in the digital world including access, abilities, and outcomes.

This course focuses on understanding the policies and practical implementation of digital citizenship. Our guiding questions include:

1. What is our place in the digital world? How do we thrive while balancing our digital and analog selves?
2. What aspects of digital and internet law or policy influence our lives and work?
3. How is artificial intelligence transforming the digital landscape?
4. How do societal inequities and digital divides influence our culture in the digital age?
5. How do we navigate the current and emerging digital world to live, learn, and work in environments inseparable from digital dangers such as misinformation, hyperbole, and division?

{{youtube:medium:center|TggeArfXWo8, Hear Professor Barger discuss his awesome D.C. Summer Session 2025 course}}