Digital Literacy issues in Further Education

The following issues were highlighted in a discussion with college staff (as part of the PADDLE project):

Learners are relying increasingly on the use of their own technology for study and for assessment. Learners are therefore sometimes ‘bypassing’ college technology in order to use technology which they are more comfortable with, have personal control of and which is, possibly, more advanced. This raises issues about provision of public wi fi for learners and wi fi access to college networks.

Tutors are allowing the use of the learner’s own technology (for assessment) where it is possible to capture and store the use of such technologies (in line with traditional assessment methods). This raises the issue of the barriers to learning faced by the technology ‘have nots’.

Tutors discussed the pros and cons of using external social media against social media designed specifically for educational use (including Moodle). The general feeling was that learners should be able to use the technologies they are more comfortable with (eg Facebook, Twitter) but that more is needed to be done to educate learners in their effective and safe use. It was recommended, where possible, for learners to create different accounts for educational and personal use.

The issue of the use of social media in the context of work based learning was also discussed. here the observation was made that many employers block the use of social media sites by staff (and therefore work based learners). In this context if was felt the use of education specific social media would therefore be more appropriate.

 

What are the barriers to FE students becoming effective learners in a digital world?

I’m a panel member at the forthcoming JISC Innovating e-learning conference on Thursday 24 November 2011. I’ll be addressing the following issues:

What are the barriers to FE students becoming effective learners in a digital world and how might we overcome those barriers?

One area for discussion, for example,  is about whether or not learners should be able to use social media to collect/create evidence for assessment.

Comments, ideas or suggestions  welcome

Simplified Digital Literacy skills audit

Having conducted our intial Digital Literacy Skills audit with a number of students – both peer e-guides and their fellow student cohorts – we have significantly revised the initial set of audit questions.

The main issues with the initial audit were:

• Too many questions – students found the initial 23 questions too long and repetitive (with questions seen as being  to similar)
• Questions not linked closely enough to training/support materials – the new set of questions is clearly linked to support and training on offer making a much clearer diagnostic tool and providing a more manageable PDP for learners
• Did not concentrate on core skills – web 2.0 skills were seen as cutting across other Digital Literacy skills and are no longer audited separately
• Did not differentiate between different skill levels – the initial audit included questions relating to skills at different levels, these were unclear and contributed to learner confusion 

The initial results were surprising in that the weaknesses in Digital Literacy skills identified related to searching for information and effective use of Moodle rather than the expected areas which were Web 2.0, e-safety and use of the College ICT network. However given the survey was conducted in the spring then most students will already have acquired skills in relation to the basic use of ICT, Moodle and a greater awareness of e-safety issues.

The new audit includes only 7 questions but now has two skill levels built in (essential and desirable) with room to expand to a third level (‘nice to have’ skills). If learners positevely respond to the level 1 skills set then they will be prompted with the level 2 questions. Those who score weakly at level 1 will only be presented with those skills questions and corresponding PDP (of suggested training needs).

The initial and revised audit questions are contained in the attached spreadsheet

eGuide Audit v2 criteria

How we selected our Digital Literacy peer e-guides

For the pilot stage of the project (January-June 2011) we aimed to identify between 10-20 peer e-guides. We aimed to cover as broad a spectrum of courses as possible (covering levels 1 to 4), including both FE and HE learners. Consequently we targeted individual tutors in each Curriculum area to identify suitable learners to act as peer e-guides.

Project team members discussed the project aims with individual tutors. In addition, tutors and learners were given a brief document summarising the project and e-guide requirements.

The central project hypothesis was that learners look primarily to their peers for ICT support. Furthermore within a given cohort of learners one or more students will naturally emerge as the ones to whom other learners look for support. This hypothesis has proved correct in terms of the project experience so far. Most of the peer e-guides were selected by their tutors on this basis – although a few were selected by volunteering.

We were suprised at the high level of interest amongst staff and students at a very busy time of the academic year. We quickly identified 25 learners to act as e-guides. We allowed tutors to select more than one e-guide from their cohorts- mainly to ensure that all the Digital Literacy competencies were covered. In practice this provided more peer support amongst the e-guides and has enabled the e-guides to assist learners on the same programme of study but in a different cohort.

The benefits of the project were promoted to the e-guides solely in educational terms (ie would look good on CV, improve ICT skills, open up opportunities for further qualifications). Other incentives (ie prizes) were not revealed until after the initial briefings.

Only 3 of the e-guides identified dropped out prior to attending one of the briefing sessions. Of the 22 e-guides who attended the briefing session; 21 completed the intitial Digital Literacy skills audit and 2o attended at least one of the initial training sessions. E-guides were drawn from only two college campuses: Rhos & Denbigh, to facilitate supporting the pilot stage of the project.

The breakdown of e-guides by level of course (from Rhos campus) was as follows:

• Level 1 = 2
• Level 3 = 8
• Level 4 (ie HE) = 6

Digital Literacy Skills Audit

As part of our PEDL project we have developed a skills audit to give a baseline measure of the digital literacy skills of both our peer e-guides and their student cohorts. The e-guides and learners will retake the skills audit at the end of the project to measure the distance travelled.

We wanted a skills audit which was brief , simple to complete but which also indicated future training needs. We found the style of the skills audit used by Salford University ideal. We have now produced our own set of questions, based around the definition of Digital Literacy we are using, covering:

• Use of College network ICT services
• Moodle
• Digital skills for learning – use of common application software
• Information finding skills
• Referencing and plagiarism
• E-safety
• Web 2.0 technologies

We are currently piloting the audit but aim to make it available online to learners for September.

What is Digital Literacy?

For our PEDL project we have used the term Digital Literacy to represent a broad range of skills – specifically basic ICT skills, information skills and e-safety. This offers a potentially broader remit than Information Literacy. Furthermore, Digital Literacy is probably a more widely understood term outside the library community (particularly with the link to Digital Inclusion).

With regard to basic ICT skills we are focussing on the skills needed to make the most effective of the college ICT network (eg e-mail, file handling, basic applications software) and our Moodle VLE.

The Information skills strand will cover making effective use of internet searching, accessing e-resouces and referencing/plagiarism.

We will also have a cross cutting strand on the use of Web 2.0 tools in a teaching and learning context.

We found the following documents useful when defining Digital Literacy:

Digital Britain (DCMS and BIS, 2009), The Heart of Digital Wales (WAG, 2009), Digital Inclusion in Wales (Welsh Affairs Committee, 2009), Delivering Digital Inclusion – A strategic framework for Wales (WAG, 2010) and Thriving in the 21^st century: learning literacies for the Digital Age (JISC, 2009).

Peer E- guides and Digital Literacy (PEDL)

Firstly, apologies for the lack of activity on this blog over the last 12 months or so.

However, I am going to make regular use of the blog to post the findings of a JISC e- learning project I’m currently managing.

The project works on the assumption that learners gain much of their ICT knowledge from their peers rather than from formal training.

Consequently we will train up student peer e-guides to provide informal ICT and information skills support and, most importantly, to use the e-guides as advocates for the support available through the Library & Learning Technology Service.

More online resources for Reader Development

As a followup to my earlier blog post – here are some other online resources that can be used to support Reader Development (and are relevant to students on the ICTL course):

Fantastic Fiction – this website is particularly useful for searching by author and for filtering results by genre. The website also includes book reviews .

What’s next? – a very useful website for identifying prequels and sequels. This website, produced by Kent District Libraries in the States,  allows you to search titles in a given series – identifying titles occuring before or after the one you search for.

BookgroupInfo – If you want advice on starting a group or a place to promote your reading group then try Book Group Info which also allows users to search for reading groups by region.

FE library update July 2009

This blog has been running for over 12 months now and I was going to post my reflections on my first 12 months as a blogger but instead I’ve written up my experience for the next issue of YDdolen – which if accepted for publication will appear in the autumn.

Those working in FE in England have hopefully received their copies of the CoFHE self assessment toolkit for Learning Resource Services. I’m sure the publication of the hardcopy toolkit will encourage more regions to run dissemination events on using the toolkit.

Umbrella 2009 held at Hertfordshire University was a great success and copies of presentations delivered at sessions organised by CoFHE are starting to appear on the website. There was much coverage of the conference on Twitter see the #umbrella09 tag.

Details of the 2010 CoFHE/UC&R Conference, to be held at Exeter University from 21-23 June 2010, should be circulated in the autumn.

There was an interesting piece in the Guardian today about a blog, Awful Library Books, set up by a couple of American librarians to highlight the dated and inappropriate stock still held on public library shelves across America. I wonder how much better libraries in the UK would fare under similar scrutiny?

FE library update June 2009

The CoFHE self assessment toolkit for learning resource services is now available in hardcopy and all colleges in England should hopefully receive copies shortly via their local JISC RSC.

The recent CoFHE conference at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh was widely covered in the Web 2.0 arena. On Twitter posts can be found using the #cofhe09 tag.

Jo Alcock has written up a number of the conference sessions on her blog.

Presentations from the conference can be found on the CoFHE website.

CoFHE London and South East Circle (LASEC) now has its own blog which also includes some references to the conference.