Digital literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute? Key findings

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Digital literacies as a Postgraduate
Attribute?Key findings

• Lesley Gourlay Martin Oliver
• Institute of Education, University of London
• http//diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org

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Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute?

• JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme
• http//diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/
• Institute of Education, University of London
• Baseline work iGraduate survey / Focus groups /
  multimodal journalling in year 1
• Intervention studies in year 2
• Academic Writing Centre
• Learning Technologies Unit
• Library

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Key themes

• Characteristics of academic practice
• Limits on taxonomies of digital literacy
• The diversity of student experience
• Space and mobility
• Managing identities

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Academic practice is both digital and textual

• Academic practices are overwhelming textual
• These are situated in social and disciplinary
  contexts
• Textual practices are increasingly digitally
  mediated
• These practices take place across a range of
  domains
• Students create complex assemblages enrolling a
  range of digital, material, spatial and temporal
  resources

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• Many students felt overwhelmed by the range of
  choice and availability of digital resources and
  devices
• Digital resources are increasingly widespread,
  but paper-based resources remain important (e.g.
  note taking, assessed work)
• The institutional digital infrastructure is
  highly valued, but can still cause frustration
  (e.g. management of logins)
• However, a small minority still try to limit
  their engagement with the digital, some to an
  extremely strong degree

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Limits facing taxonomic accounts of digital
literacy

• Students use a wide, and constantly changing,
  array of technologies in their studies
• The technologies included a mix of personal and
  institutional services and devices
• All students used sub-sets of the list of
  technologies for any student, many technologies
  are irrelevant
• Lists are time specific, rapidly becoming dated
• even stable uses of technology involves
  development, and old practices may no longer work
  (e.g. obsolete versions of software)
• The same technology can be used at different
  times for different ends (e.g. browsers for
  searching, shopping, etc), and different
  technologies get used for similar purposes (e.g.
  facebook and LinkedIn for social networking)

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As an example our students

• Office tools (primarily Microsoft, plus Google
  docs and Prezi)
• Institutional VLEs (Moodle and Blackboard)
• Email (institutional, personal and work-based)
• Synchronous conferencing services (Skype,
  Elluminate)
• Calendars (iCal, Google)
• Search engines and databases (including Google,
  Google Scholar, library databases, professional
  databases such as Medline, etc),
• Social networking sites (Facebook, Academia.edu,
  LinkedIn) and services (Twitter)
• Image editing software (photoshop, lightbox)
• Endnote
• Reference works (Wikipedia, online dictionaries
  and social bookmarking sites such as Mendeley)
• GPS services
• Devices (PCs at the institution and at home,
  laptops including MacBooks, iPhones, iPads,
  Blackberries and E-book readers).

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Diversity of student experience

• The student experience is not singular
• Evidence of marked differences in experiences and
  priorities across the four groups of students in
  our work
• PGCE, MA students, PhD students, Online masters
  students
• Different orientations towards technology use
• Curation, combat and coping
• Each student showed different orientations at
  different times these were not types of student

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Curation
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• For example when I attend a lecture or a session
  I always record the session, and its after the
  session, but sometimes I listen to the lecture
  again to confirm my knowledge or reflect the
  session...when I, for example were writing an
  essay and I have to...confirm what the lecturer
  said, I could confirm with the recording data.

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Combat
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• I was like bullied into it by people saying, oh,
  youll be left behind if you dont use Facebook.
  So yes, that was when I got into it, so... And
  then... so now I would say Facebook, Im not the
  most... like I said to you in the focus group,
  Im a bit uncomfortable about the whole kind of
  like Big Brother aspect. (Sally Interview 1)
• I feel like, also that Google is equally watching
  you. You know, theyre all watching you, theyre
  all trying to sell you things, and the thing is
  not, I dont so much mind being bombarded with
  advertising as I mind having things put about me
  on things like Facebook that I dont want. You
  know, I dont want my friends to spy on me, I
  dont want my friends to know what I listen to on
  YouTube. (Sally Interview 1)

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Coping
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• In my school, I we had our staff room was
  equipped one, two, three, four, five, six,
  seven seven computers now we can use and only
  one of them attached with a printer. So, actually
  weve got six PGC students over there, so its,
  kind of, everybody wants to get to that computer
  where you can use the printer. Yes, so in the end
  I found actually I can also use the printer from
  the library in the school.
• So, six student teachers tried to use other
  computer. So, it, kind of, sometimes feels a bit
  crowded. And when the school staff want to use
  it, well, okay, it seems like we are the
  invaders, intruders?

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Space and mobility

• Studying is not restricted to institutional
  premises
• Work, home, place of study, coffee shops, parks,
  etc.
• Students travel between various sites
• Country-to-country, work commitments away from
  home, conferences, etc.
• Many of our students used more than one library
• Nearly all our students use technology to support
  remote and immediate access to digital resources
• Ownership, size, portability, connectivity,
  access to, and readability of remote resources
  are important factors.
• Students use mobile devices during downtime or
  dead time to catch up on their studies

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• For me the most important thing is portability,
  because I use technologies, ICT, everywhere I go,
  anywhere I go. For example of course I use some
  technologies, PCs and laptops and my iPad in the
  IOE building, and in the IOE building I use PC, I
  use them in PC room, in library, and for
  searching some data or journals. In the lecture
  room I record my, record the lectures and taking
  memos by that.

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Managing identities

• Digital resources distribute student identities
  across different domains or contexts
• These varied for students, but a simple
  delineation was between private, professional and
  student identities
• Use of resources and practices from one area of
  life could support activity in another (e.g.
  creating a quiet place to study at home)
• Management of boundaries was an important issue,
  and could place extra demands on students (e.g.
  maintaining multiple email accounts)

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Example spatial boundaries
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• One of the challenges of undertaking an online
  course is that most probably you will do this
  alongside other activities such as a job or
  other. As a result you end up with multiple email
  addresses and different folders, files and docs
  in your computer. I am finding that one needs to
  be very organised and a practical thinker in
  order to retrieve the information you need,
  navigate between one and in the other.

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• Project blog http//diglitpga.jiscinvolve.org/wp
  /
• Project webpage http//www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/p
  rogrammes/elearning/developingdigitalliteracies/Di
  gLitPGAttribute.aspx
• Project contactsLesley Gourlay
  (l.gourlay_at_ioe.ac.uk)Martin Oliver
  (m.oliver_at_ioe.ac.uk)