Dr Palitha EdirisinghaInstitute of Learning Innovation

University of Leicester, UK

Based of a research project funded by the College of Social Sciences,

University of Leicester

Presented at the King Saud UniversityRiyadh

Saudi Arabia9 Sept 2013

Digital literacy and students’ use of informal online resources for formal learning

Digital literacy and students’ use of informal online resources for formal learning

College of Education, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 9 Sept 2013

Dr Palitha EdirisinghaInstitute of Learning Innovation

University of Leicester, UK

Digital literacy skills

Key focus of this presentation

Based of a research project funded by the College of Social Sciences,

University of Leicester

The background

Jenkins et al (2008),Francis (2010)

Adorno (2001)

Research questions

• How do university students’ use digital devices and web 2.0 technologies within their formal learning context?

• What are the digital literacy issues that might emerge in using web-based resources and tools?

• How might we recognise students’ informal use of these tools and resources as part of their Personal Learning Environments (PLEs)?

Background and theoretical Concepts

Why should the teachers be concerned about this? Can’t students manage their own learning using new

technologies?

Technology opportunists … argue that, with wide access to information and ideas on the web, the learner can pick and choose their education … . An academic education is not equivalent to a trip to the public library, digital or otherwise. The educationist has to attack this kind of nonsense … .

(Laurillard, 2012, p. 4)

Educationists must resist the idea that because of new technologies students can do it for themselves – instead they create an even more critical role for the teacher, who is not simply mediating the knowledge already articulated, but is more deeply involved in scaffolding the way students think and how they develop the new kinds of skills they will need for the digital literacies.

(Laurillard, 2012, p. 4)

Digital literacy skills

What does it means to be literate in the new media age?

Digital literacy in UK Policy

Digital Britain Report (2009)

– sets out the strategy of the UK government in placing technology at the centre of the country’s economic recovery

– recognises the importance of people having the ‘… capabilities and skills to flourish in the digital economy’ (DCMS, 2009: 1).

UK Policy

• Media literacy is ‘the ability to use, understand and create media and communications in a variety of contexts’ (Ofcom, 2011b)

Digital literacy in Higher Education policy

Prof. Sir David Melville (2009) Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience:– Although students in HE may well be pervasive

users of social networking sites, blogs, virtual environments and other multi-media forms, they lacked deep critical skills to analyse and validate information on-line.

Digital literacy – terms and definitions

– Vary depending on:• who is funding digital literacy research• disciplines in which research being carried out /

reported

– information literacy, media literacy, web literacy, e-literacy, digital literacy, and other…

• ‘notion of literacy beyond its original application to the medium of writing’

• ‘emergent literacies’ – young people’s media related play’

• ‘visual literacy’, ‘television literacy’, ‘cine-literacy’, ‘multiliteracies’, …

• Term literacy becoming fashionable: ‘economic literacy’, ‘emotional literacy’, ‘spiritual literacy’,

• Literacy = competence(see Buckingham, 2007, p. 43)

Digital literacy

The competencies that are required to make effective use of a range of new media tools and resources necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing and increasingly technology-rich world (Francis, 2008).

Digital literacy

• ‘… more than learning how to use a computer and keyboard, or how to do online searches.’

• Being able to evaluate and use information critically

• asking questions about the sources of that information, the interests of its producers, and the ways in which it represents the world […]. (Buckingham (2007, p. 267, in Ryberg and Dirckinck –Holmsfield, 2010: 173)

Buckingham (2007)

Representation: the ability to critically assess and reflect on issues such as authority, reliability and bias, to notice whose voices are being heard, and whose are silenced.

Language: the ability to understand the ‘grammar’ of various forms of communication and the codes and conventions of different genres.

Production: a fundamental understanding of who is communicating to whom, and why, which also encompasses awareness of commercial interests and influences.

Audience: An awareness of one’s own position, both in terms of being targeted by communications and in terms of participating in communications as a critical recipient, active cultural consumer and co-producer. Buckingham (2007)

Buckingham (2007)

Participatory Cultures

Jenkins et al., (2008) ‘participatory culture’:– ‘a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic

expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed to novices’ (p. 3).

Participatory Cultures

‘one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at least they care about what other people think about what they have created).’ (Jenkins et al, 2008, p. 3).

Participatory Cultures

Access to such a participatory culture has a number of beneficial effects for learners including: opportunities for peer to peer learning, the diversification of cultural expression, development of skills valued in modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship (Jenkins et al, 2008).

Participatory cultures

Supports the emergence of self-directed learning activities beyond formal educational contexts (Francis 2011)

Online affinity spaces (Gee, 2004)

• As a critique of the applicability of Wenger’s (1998) ‘Communities of Practice’ to online communities. ‘New comers’ learning from ‘old timers’.

• The importance of ‘space in which people interact, rather than on a membership in a community’ (Gee 2004, p. 77).

• ‘Start by talking about spaces rather than “communities”’ (ibid, p. 78)

Online Affinity Spaces

• … ‘particular type of space’ to describe the nature and patterns of online interactions facilitated by technological tools.

• having both ‘content’ and ‘interactional’ dimensions.

MethodsMethod Purpose 1st round

(2010-11)2nd round (2011-12)

Questionnaire surveys of undergraduate and postgraduate students

to identify their ownership of and use of digital devices and web 2.0 tools (Questionnaire adapted from Francis (2008))

53 students 41 students

Focus groups (4) with students (3 – 4 in each group)

to gain a deeper insight into their use of web 2.0 tools in a learning context

3 groups, 10 students

3 groups, 11 students

Workshops with students

to observe their online activities and digital practices

8 students

Findings / themes

Transition into a new academic culture

Access to and use of digital devices, web-based tools and resources

Approach to an assessed piece of work

Use of web-based tools and resources for their formal learning

Ownership of computer and other digital devices (% reporting)

Note: 2010 – 2011, n= 53; 2011 – 2012, n=41

The most important device(s) for your studies / study-related activities

Note: 2010 – 2011, n= 53; 2011 – 2012, n=41

The devices used to access internet during term-time

Note: 2010 – 2011, n= 53; 2011 – 2012, n=41

Locations where you use computers during term time

Note: 2010 – 2011, n= 53; 2011 – 2012, n=41

Top three locations for computer use during term time (2010 – 2011 data)

University computer rooms

57%

27%

University library

65%

Term-time accommodation

Online activities (2011-12 data)

Please go to the following URL to access the data from the 2010-2011 questionnaire survey

http://goo.gl/kraQF

Approaching an assessed piece of work – patterns of navigation and study environments

Mostly used web-based resources and tools for learning

Web tools and resources that students use for their formal learning

NON-WESTERN Web tools and resources that students use for their formal learning

Recommendation sites / toolsP(J): I want to mention a special website. It’s a Chinese website and its name is Douban. I find, it’s a very useful website for me, because if I want to read a book and I search the book in Douban, I will find the book. There is specific webpage for this book and some recommendations and some comments from other readers, their recommendations, their comments about this book. Besides, this website allow people to use tags about books, music or films, so members of this website can just search these tags and they can find relevant resources and besides that, the website will give you recommendations. If I search a book, and the website itself, will give some, some most relevant search results about, relevant to books. It means that, besides the book that I am searching it will display several books on the same topic, in the same theme, or several books most of the readers of this book were also interested in. So, for me, I suppose, it’s a very useful website for learning. But I haven’t found English websites that have the same function. [2011. FG2]

Twitter

Y: I find it quite useful for my academic work because all the people I know, professors here [at the university], are on twitter but it is not easy to find these professors on Facebook. When I follow my supervisor on Twitter I can also see others who are also following him on twitter who are also professors so we can have useful conversations. [2012. FG3]

Interviewer: What are the advantages of following your professor on Twitter?

Y: He always updates on some academic news, what he has found out, his recommendations ….

International Dimension

• Students are embedded in virtual structures from their country of origin and therefore bring them with them whilst studying at Leicester.

• Baidu, ICIBA, Renren• QQ small group work (language familiarity)• no limits to size of groups, quick and easy.• Inclusions/exclusions-Google Wave

Participatory Culture

• ‘Participatory culture’ book review recommendations, Yahoo answers, Baidu answers.

• Instant message, to contact peers.• But contested notions of ‘quality’ and

‘authority’ related to peer to peer information.

• In general a sense of what is an ‘academic’ source and what is not.

Participatory Culture

• Creators? Students in our sample keep updated blogs, contribute and comment on other blogs.

• Reflexivity, students use these blogs as way to reflect on their own experience as learners.

• Share and reflect on their experiences as overseas students. They often get responses and comments on their blogs.

Authority and Status

• YouTube: for one participant useful basis for preparing an essay, other participants reject it as not an academic sources they can ‘use’ or ‘untrustworthy’.

• Wikipedia, some sense of the limitations of this information, but it is often a starting place for background information and to follow up references.

• See The Guardian, Economist, BBC as ‘reliable’ information they can refer to.

• Dominance of Google infrastructure: Google Scholar, Google Dictionary, Google Wave Google Books.

Resources

• Reflections from the workshop• Students pooled a huge array of online

sources, some (not all) in their first language, familiarity from their country of origin.

• They do however, develop new sources as a result of their study, some through tutor recommendations others through peers.

• Some gaps in their knowledge e.g. primary and secondary sources.

Recommendations and thoughts

• The cultural context of media literacy needs to be focused on more closely.

• Participatory cultures vary-Jenkins very much rooted in US and particular types of activities online (gaming for example).

• As learners and teachers we need to recognise this cultural context.

• Provide direction and intervention (where there is scant access to physical books, the web is seen as a solution). Not all students have the ability to determine good quality sources online.

• Do students need a PLE?

Literacy / literacies?

• Participatory cultures is argued by Jenkins, (2008) and see also *Ryberg and Dirckinck-Holmfield (2010) are ‘transferable’ to the academic context.

• Locating multiple sources, aggregation of material, editing and revision of material, critical reflection and evaluation.

• Our research highlights some of these elements but there is a variation amongst students and still a need to focus on the ‘critical’ in their understanding of online sources.

Final remarks

• Vertical and horizontal space of the new media environment raises a number if challenges

• Expert and ‘non-expert’ information• Moving across ‘expert’ or ‘academic’ information that

flows downwards: reading lists, Library e-link, alongside peer to peer (horizontal) information.

• Seamless spaces on-line QQ, off-line: group study rooms in the library.

• Students have useful mobile technology an iPhone provides multiple uses: mini photocopier, access web material, arrange group meetings etc.

Final remarks

• Vertical and horizontal space of the new media environment raises a number if challenges

• Expert and ‘non-expert’ information• Moving across ‘expert’ or ‘academic’ information that

flows downwards: reading lists, Library e-link, alongside peer to peer (horizontal) information.

• Seamless spaces on-line QQ, off-line: group study rooms in the library.

• Students have useful mobile technology an iPhone provides multiple uses: mini photocopier, access web material, arrange group meetings etc.

Challenges

Revisiting research questions

• How do university students’ use digital devices and web 2.0 technologies within their formal learning context?

• What are the digital literacy issues that might emerge in using web-based resources and tools?

• How might we recognise students’ informal use of these tools and resources as part of their Personal learning environments?

Special thanks to our PhD students for their contributions and inspirations• Dimitrinka Atanasova (Media and Communication, Leicester)• Mengjie Jiang (Institute of Learning Innovation, Leicester)• Nan Yang (University of Trento, Italy)• Nada Al Saleh (Institute of Learning Innovation, Leicester and King Saud

University, Saudi Arabia)• Oznur Soyak (Institute of Learning Innovation, Leicester)• Tony Ratcliffe (Institute of Learning Innovation, Leicester, residing in

Canada)

Selected referencesAdorno, T. W. (2001). The Culture Industry : Selected Essays on Mass Culture . London: Routledge.

DCMS (2009) Digital Britain: Final Report London: TSO. Available at http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/digitalbritain/report/being-digital/getting-britain-online/ . [Accessed September 2009].

Dijk, J. V. 2005. The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society. London: Sage.

Francis, R.J., (2010) The Decentring of the Traditional University: the future of (self) education in virtually figured worlds ,

Francis, R.J., (2008), The Predicament of the Learner in the New Media Age, DPhil thesis submitted to University of Oxford.

Gee, J. P. (2004). Situated Language and Learning: A critique of traditional schooling, Abington, Oxfordshire: Routledge.

Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Weigel, M., & Robinson, A. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: Comparative Media Studies Programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: http://www.projectnml.org/files/working/NMLWhitePaper.pdf [Accessed 2 Nov 2010].

Melville, D. (2009) Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World: Report of Committee of Enquiry into the Changing Learner Experience , Available at: http://www.clex.org.uk/CLEX_Report_v1-final.pdf. [Accessed 29 May 2009].

Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ofcom (2011b). UK adults’ media literacy. London: Ofcom.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ofcom (2011b). UK adults’ media literacy.London: Ofcom.

Thank you!

College of Education, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 9 Sept 2013

Dr Palitha EdirisinghaInstitute of Learning Innovation

University of Leicester, UK